One week since his victory, Mentor II winner Prince Lamptey is still waiting for it to sink in, he has told the Saturday Statesman.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with this newspaper at the TV3 studio yesterday, alongside the first and second runners-up of the popular TV3 show, Joseph Ankrah and Kofi Dedzie, Prince said that his prayers had been answered.

The latest series of TV3's musical talent contest was actually his second attempt at stardom, Prince revealed: he was rejected in the regional stage of the first Mentor competition, but came back determined to succeed.

His surprise eviction from the show in the December 3 local gospel week was perhaps the biggest upset of the series - "It was a crying show in the house,” says Kofi. His re-election the following week with a resounding majority, far ahead of Cee and Anita, stirred his supporters into action, however - and eventually propelled him to victory.

“I didn"t expect to be voted back,” he claims. “That’s the rule of the game: if the votes don’t come then you have to go. I guess I knew I was good – I always got loud support – but one of the mistakes of the fans out there was to hear that I had a lot of shouts, and to think: 'no matter that happens, this guy is going to the finals’. So to start off with they were just shouting and not voting.”

Both Joe and Kofi were also rejected first time around: leaving the Accra selection day disappointed, only to compete again in Takoradi and get selected.

To think that all three would end up in the final show, alongside fourth-placed Dee, would have been inconceivable several months ago.

Kofi, a 25-year-old graphic designer from Anloga in Volta Region, can’t quite believe he made it to the end: “When I entered the house, I remember thinking, ‘I don’t think I can make it’. I thought I would stay two or three weeks – but I guess God had other plans.” He was eventually placed in third place. Prince and Joe, as first and second prize winners, have been awarded full record contracts with Family Tree. Prince, Joe, Kofi and Dee also took away a host of other prizes on Saturday night.

The end of the show will mean much more for each of the contestants than the end of their Sunday-night live performances and a few prizes, however. On Wednesday, the final four contestants also moved out of the Mentor house, which they have shared for the past three months.

The housemates were not only living together, training together and competing against one another: they were also isolated from the outside world, with no access to TV or radio, no newspapers, not even any mobile phones.

The seclusion only served to make Sunday night eviction shows even more tense, they say, as the contestants had no means of gauging their popularity and predicting the response.

For each of them, there was a moment, or several moments, when they realised they might be in with a chance: Joe remembers in particular his performance of Paul Simon’s Diamond’s on the soles of her shoes, the week Seth was evicted.

“The audience were all standing and clapping, the judges were so impressed, and I thought – wow, I might get somewhere here.’”

Asked whose talent had appeared most obvious, most intimidating when he moved into the Mentor house in October, Kofi cited Prince and Joe as obvious stars from the start.

Sandy was another star, all three agreed: her eviction, following that of Prince, the most unexpected.

“We all thought she would get through to the final four,” said Joe. “We were all good – and it was always hard when someone got evicted – but we were all shocked about Sandy.”

“Sandy was so superior,” Prince agrees. “I was like, ‘man, what happened?’ Sandy is brilliant, she’s just brilliant.”

Sandy Afreh, 24, was gifted with probably the strongest voice of any of the contestants – powerful, soulful, emotive – but she was less of an all-round entertainer than some of her male contestants. Kofi, for example, loved stage props and gimmicks: he was carried on stage inside a huge hold-all bag during Saturday night’s finals, his voice heard coming from inside before he was unzipped, unfolded and pulled out onto the stage.

With Sandy gone, the contestants had one eviction-free week before the final show-down. The camaraderie which exists between the three top winners now is clear – Kofi describes Prince as his “tight tight buddy,” whilst Prince and Joe are of course distant cousins, as they found out during the course of the series.

The constant fear of eviction, the love-and-hate of a Sunday night performance, came to a head during that final fortnight, as the contestants faced the certainty of only one winner:

“In the final weeks, it was more than just pressure,” says Joe. “I wasn’t performing like I should have been – and people kept telling me that I was letting myself down. I knew that one of us had to go: I was so scared!”

‘We hardly had time to talk to each other during the show – we were just rushing to change our clothes and get ready – but when we all stood on the stage waiting to hear the winner, I honestly didn’t know who it was going to be.”

“After they had announced the fourth and third positions, I was expecting the next name to be the first – so when I heard Joe’s name, I thought he had won!” says Prince. “I was hugging him because I thought he was the winner, ‘saying – it last it came to the family!’ When I found out it was me, I got down on my knees and thanked God.”