'THANK you very much for voting for me," says bubbly Brenda Edwards when she discovers that I was one of the phone voters trying to take her to victory in ITV's X Factor contest in 2005.

Eventually beaten by Shayne Ward, the mother-of-two is making a success of the professional circuit and has been snapped up by Darlington Motown Show boss, Peter Brent, for a tour which includes the town's Civic Theatre tomorrow and Thursday.

She says: "I performed at a corporate event last year and off the back of that Peter approached me. This isn't the first year that the Motown Show has toured, but it's the first year I've been asked to join in, so he was obviously happy with my last performance."

I'm interested to know how she coped with knowing that she was probably the best singer but would be an underdog because female X-Factor fans tend to support the male finalists.

"Guys will watch it but won't pick up the phone and vote," she says. "It's a male thing I guess, but women just love to chat. We love a good talk and it might well be an answering machine at the other end saying 'you've been charged £1.50' but we're still talking to something."

She admits she never thought she'd make the live shows because her singing voice disappeared through nerves at the boot camp stages.

"I can only thank Sharon (Osbourne, her sponsor) for that because she saw something else in me. Luckily, by the time we got back and started the live shows, my voice was back," she says.

Did it hurt when judges like Simon Cowell told her she needed to lose weight?

"Yeah, well I've lost four stone now. There were a lot of things spurring me on, my family, my friends... my wardrobe. It was either I had to get rich one way or another and buy myself some more clothes or I sort myself out and get back into my clothes. That seemed like the cheaper option. But what I look like is not what's inside of me and, hopefully, that came across," she says.

Her semi-final exit was regarded as controversial by fans, but Edwards went on to star in West End show Chicago as Mama Morton for 12 months.

"For my West End debut I couldn't have asked for more than to be in one of the best musicals out there. I was up in the tube stations, I was everywhere, it was quite frightening. You go to Waterloo Station and you look up and there's me. I just give thanks every day for those who supported me."

She's promising one or two of her X Factor songs at Darlington and says: "Bring your trainers girls, leave your heels at home, so you've got comfy shoes to dance in the aisles. As long as everyone is coming in a mood to party, I wanna have a party."

Edwards got hooked on X Factor in its first year because singing group, Voices With Soul, were from her home town of Luton. "I watched Rowetta, G4 and Steve and it was a good show. You go in there thinking you will have more of a choice on the songs but it turns out that the songs are picked for you. I think it's more of a challenge because, whether it's Sharon, Simon or Louis, they're going to look for songs that will challenge you."

The singer is now working on an album and intends to keep gigging around the country and Europe to support an album launch. "I intend to stick around for a while because I'm enjoying this very, very much," says the former accounts manager with cable and satellite TV auction channel Sit-Up.

"It's nice now because when I was an accounts manager I was always paying out money for the company, so it's nice to get the money in. I'm used to the Inland Revenue, they're lovely people... I'm sure some of them will come along at Darlington. I look forward to seeing them," she says with a roar of laughter.

* The Motown Show, Darlington Civic Theatre, Wednesday and Thursday, box office: 01325-486555

Viv Hardwick.