TOTNES singer Katherine Squire has won a shot at Eurovision Song Contest glory — after accidentally representing the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

Now Katherine and the rest of the group, Jon Lilygreen and the Islanders, are on their way to Oslo and a chance to join the ranks of past winners like Abba, Cliff Richard, Brotherhood of Man and last year's winner Alexander Rybak from Norway.

The bemused group only came together earlier this year to produce a single for a pair of Cypriot songwriters in a Welsh recording studio.

It was only later they discovered that the songwriters had entered the song in the competition to find a Eurovision entry for Cyprus.

They jumped at the chance to jet over to the Med to perform the song in the competition — and to their total surprise they won.

Now they will be heading for Oslo in May for the Eurovision semi-finals and, if they get through, to the finals on May 29.

Katherine, who lives with her parents Tony and Christine, in Ashburton Road, Totnes, described herself as a 'jobbing singer' as she said: "None of us expected to win because we are not Cypriot born and there were a lot of very fine musicians over there singing in the competition who are very popular in Cyprus.

"But we won and now we are heading for Oslo."

The 35-year-old former Grove School and KEVICC schoolgirl is a backing singer with the six-strong group headed by vocalist and guitarist Jon Lilygreen from Wales.

The rest of the group are fellow backing singer Sean Watts from Wales, guitarist Greek Cypriot Charalambos Kallona, drummer John Gregory from Scotland and Sylvia Strand, a pianist from Norway.

John and Sylvia have a recording studio in Wales and they formed the group after they were sent the song by Cypriot songwriters Nasos Lambrianides and Melis Constantinou.

Katherine and Sylvia are old friends and sing together regularly.

The group was up against nine other contenders in the competition in Nicosia on Sunday and came out on top.

The contest's two sets of semi-finals and the finals will be broadcast to a potential audience of millions of viewers across Europe.

"To be honest we are all so shocked about it," said Katherine, who is a trained classical singer.

"None of us expected to win. We all went out to have fun and jam a bit. It has been a really wild experience," she said.

She said none of the group had had time to think about the consequences of winning the Eurovision contest.

"Time will tell. We have no idea what will come of this," she said.

"Since we won things have gone completely crazy. Since we got back at 5.30am on Tuesday we have been contacted by BBC New in Wales and the TV people are going up to record the group."