Darlington'S darling Zoe Birkett has thanked all of the people who have helped her get into the last five of ITV's Pop Idol show.

The 16-year-old's performance of Abba's Thank You For The Music on Saturday night's show received the highest praise of the night from the panel of judges.

With the competition getting harder, she hopes a strong performance in the next show, theme around big band music, will help her survive at least another week.

"I'm really, really pleased. It's getting harder, getting really, really hard," she said, adding the Abba theme was the most difficult challenge yet.

Singing last out of the six, all three judges had been highly critical of those who had gone before.

But, following a strong performance, during which Zoe unveiled her new "monthly" hair style, judge Pete Waterman simply said: "Zoe, thank you for the music."

Fellow judges "Doctor" Neil Fox and Simon Cowell also approved and enough of the 2,000,000 votes made sure she was not evicted from the show.

But now Zoe, a student at Carmel RC Technology College, Darlington, is looking forward to the next round, and has chosen a big band song she loves singing.

"I'm singing quite a happy track, I can't tell you what it is, but I hope other people like it," she said. "I enjoy singing it."

And to her fans, she added: "I'd really like to say thank you very much for supporting me."

Zoe revealed to The Northern Echo how she sticks to her pre-performance ritual as she waits to step out into the limelight.

"I keep at the side of the stage an Angel of Prosperity," she says, referring to an inspiration stone charm.

And her voice coaches make sure she drinks plenty of warm water before singing, to keep her powerful voice working its best.

Other than that, she has two simple rules - going through her lyrics so she doesn't forget and making sure she doesn't fall down the studio steps.

For more about the North-East music scene and about our We're Backing Zoe campaign, visit www.thisisrevolution.co.uk.