SIMON’S got talent Why ‘Mr Nasty’ turned nice
THE TV STAR TELLS PIERS MORGAN HOW HIS SON HAS CHANGED HIS LIFE
My favourite Simon Cowell story involves a ventriloquist named Terry Fator. He was a chubby, middle-aged guy who won the second series of America’s Got Talent by throwing his voice to sing songs through puppets.
I was one of the show’s judges, backed him from the start, and predicted he’d be a huge star. But Simon - who, as AGT creator and executive producer held the rights to manage Fator’s career if he liked − didn’t think he could make any serious money from a bloke in his forties singing Roy Orbison’s Crying with his hand up a turtle’s backside. So Simon let him go.
Disappointed but undeterred, Terry landed a residency at the Las Vegas Hilton that turned out to be wildly and unexpectedly successful. On the back of it, the legendary Mirage hotel offered him a five-year, almost $155 million contract. Terry renewed it for more money in 2014 and is now the Strip’s highest-earner. To celebrate, he wrote a book entitled Who’s the Dummy Now?
Well, it’s pretty obvious who the dummy is and that’s the guy who kissed goodbye to at least $75 million in commission.
But the dummy concerned
doesn’t like me reminding him of this fact, which, of course, merely encourages me to take every opportunity to do exactly that. “So Simon,” I say, “with regard to Terry Fator, how does it feel to be like the guy from Decca Records who turned down The Beatles because he said guitar bands were on the way out?”
“That’s not quite true,” he splutters. “I’ve said to a group of my people, ‘Tell me what you would have done then with Terry Fator knowing what we know now?’ ... Of course I’m thrilled for him, but I’m not so thrilled we weren’t part of the deal.”
That is the understatement of the millennium. Simon (59) loves deals. He lives, breathes, walks, talks and dreams of deals. The only thing he loves more than a deal is winning; he’s absurdly competitive.
When we worked together on Britain’s Got Talent we’d have bets on which spider would crawl to the top of a dressing room window first and he’d sulk for hours if his came second.
I’ve known him for 30 years, since I was a showbiz reporter and he was a record company executive flogging musical icons such as Zig & Zag and the Teletubbies. It’s been funny, and slightly startling, to watch him go from unknown purveyor of novelty artists to being the most famous TV star on earth.
Simon’s expansive backroom team assured me prior to this interview that he’s never been fitter, healthier, happier, more successful, warmer or as cuddly. But then, they’re paid to say that. And anyway, who wants a warm, cuddly Simon Cowell?
“I don’t know whether to be pleased for you if this is all true, or disturbed,” I tell him.
“I’m genuinely happy, Piers!” he insists.
Is he? The last time I interviewed him was in 2005 and for Simon, given the frantic pace he lives at, 13 years is an eternity.
“You said then that on a one-to-10 scale of happiness, you felt you were just a five because you were frustrated that you hadn’t done enough in your life to warrant feeling happy,” I put to him.
“God, did I?” he exclaims. “Well, the happiness level has definitely gone up to... a nine.”
“What do you put that down to?” I wonder.
“Eric [his four-year-old son], number one. My life is very different since he came along. My 59th birthday ... started with me taking Eric out cycling, with him dressed as an alien. Then I bought him yoghurt, watched him play in his hamster wheel on the grass, we had a swim and I taught him how to ride a quad bike.”
This is not how I imagined Simon would spend his birthday. Sensing my disconcertion, he adds hastily, “Lauren [ his partner] was in New York seeing her son Adam, so I ended up getting sloshed with a friend of mine at Nobu in Malibu. And when I woke up the next day with a hangover, I thought about what a great day I’d had and how I do feel happier than I have done for a very long time.”
There was a time, around a year ago, when friends were very worried about Simon. He was hospitalised after a weird 4am fall down the stairs at his London home after fainting, something doctors ascribed to low blood pressure and stress from his insane work schedule.
“Sometimes we get a reminder that we’re not invincible, and this was mine,” he said at the time. He took it seriously, escaping the LA rat race to buy a home in Malibu overlooking the sea.
He even gave up his beloved mobile phone, which he blamed for never being able to relax, explaining, “There was one morning a year or so ago when I woke up to 25 unread text messages and I thought, ‘I’m really not in the mood to read those today.’ So I left it a week and it went up to 200 unread messages… So I thought, ‘I’m just going to turn the phone off for a month and I’ll get back to it then.’ And I never turned the phone back on again.”
Another step Simon took to improve his quality of life was to stop watching TV news.
“If you wake up in the morning and put the news on and go to bed with the news on, you’re not going to be in a great mood. Especially if you’re also going on social media where it all becomes so negative and everyone’s screaming at each other. So I stopped doing it and began watching The Simpsons or a great movie instead and I’ve felt so much happier.”
What did he make of two political phenomena that seem to have sent otherwise rational people completely nuts: Donald Trump and Brexit?
“Absolutely zero,” he replies. “Maybe this is why I’m happy − I don’t talk about politics or religion any more; not at home, not on TV, not to you, not to anybody. It’s not worth it.”
Simon is a curiously unemotional man for someone who has created such emotioncharged talent shows. So when did he last properly cry?
“When I went on your stupid Life Stories show [in 2010]. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, and I did.”
It was talking about his late father, who died on the same day Simon celebrated his firstever number one hit with Westlife, which set him off that day. His mother Julie, the rock of his life, died three years ago, a moment that I know hit him very hard.
“I’ve accepted my mum not being here, but I talk to her and my dad in my head a lot. Pretty much every decision we make now I always have them in my mind and have this sort of conversation: What would they say? What would they think?
“It guides me.”
What have been his favourite career moments?
“The first would be One Direction, because the decision to put them together was so quick, like 10 to 15 minutes. Everything after that was down to them, not me. Putting them together was a great decision.
“Then, of course, Susan Boyle. I’ve never hated myself more than when I saw that awful mocking, sneering look you and I gave each other when she first came on stage and started speaking. I knew people would hate our guts and think we were absolutely disgusting, but we had to leave that part in or it wouldn’t have been authentic.
“All I remember saying to the team was, ‘Maybe just stay on Piers’ face a little longer than mine,” Simon laughs.
Now, though, he has found something even more important than making stars or getting big ratings – being a father. Is he as tough and demanding on Eric as he is on contestants?
“I am strict with him about things like politeness,” he says. “My parents taught me the importance of good manners and treating people with respect, and I’ve passed that onto Eric. But they weren’t strict with me about school stuff and I won’t be either.”
Simon clearly loves being a dad, but has he ever actually got his hands dirty?
“No,” he admits. “All I’ve ever done is the fun things with him. We talk a lot; he’s like my best friend.”
Most of the dirty work has thus befallen Eric’s mother, Lauren Silverman (41), the woman Simon controversially wooed while she was married to one of his American friends, with whom she has a 12-year-old son, Adam. They went public with their relationship in 2013 and Eric was born the following year, when Simon was 55.
I’ve known all of Simon’s longer-term girlfriends over the past three decades, but none has got him down the aisle. Will Lauren, the mother of his child and a delightfully feisty and amusing lady, become Mrs Cowell? There’s a long pause.
“Let’s just… maybe we could skip over this bit… haha. Look, I’m hardly going to tell you in this interview, am I?”
He changes the topic, asking, “How old are you, Piers?” “Fifty-three,” I reply.
“I was looking at a picture of you the other day,” he says. “I actually do look younger than you…”
“That’s because you’ve spent hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions, to achieve that,” I say.
“What, and you haven’t tried anything?” he asks.
“Absolutely nothing ... No, my head is as
God intended it to be... Where would you draw the line in terms of vanity?”
“Well I might have had a few bits and pieces done,” he admits, “but not plastic surgery.
And I don’t think I’d ever end up dyeing my hair. But look, I can remember years ago people laughing at me for having straight white teeth, and now it’s kind of normal.”
Simon loves to consider himself a regular guy despite spending his entire life in the gilded confines of mansions, Rolls-Royces and private jets (he even has black-monogrammed loo paper).
He’s also been a legendary ladies’ man. But how many times has he been properly in love? “Oh, God,” he sighs. “I couldn’t answer that question.”
“Well, let’s narrow it down to how many times have you had your heart broken?”
“Once. Only for a day,” he says. “A girl who I thought I was seeing snogged someone else when I was at college and I went home − I had a motorbike − and she phoned the following day to ask, ‘Do you want me to bring my motorbike helmet back?’” he laughs loudly.
“For 12 hours I was like the male version of Bridget Jones, playing really horrible films and feeling p***** off, and then we broke up a month later because I found someone else.”
One of Simon’s biggest strengths is loyalty to friends, something that extends to his ex-girlfriends, most of whom still adore him. He also treats people who work for him with warmth and respect, even if he is often a complete pain as a boss − pedantic, impatient, testy, contrary and demanding. (Those same traits make him a brilliant TV and record producer.)
Perhaps most surprisingly, given his reputation for rudeness, he is one of the most well-mannered people I know, and always goes out of his way to be kind and generous to people like drivers or waiters.
“My mother taught me that ‘Manners maketh man’, and I have a real problem if I see people being rude to staff in restaurants. It’s just revolting.”
In August, Simon was honoured with his own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
The only thing that could top that would be a tap on the
shoulder from the Queen.
Would he like to be Sir Simon? (I know he would.)
“There’s been so much stuff that’s come out about people who’ve tried so hard in such dodgy ways to become a knight. I’m in two minds about it. If somebody doesn’t think I should be, I don’t care! And if they think I should, great!
“And by the way, if I ever did, I wouldn’t allow anyone to call me Sir Simon − apart from you.”
I’ve always thought Simon enjoyed his later-life fame more than even the vast success, riches and female adulation it has brought him. It’s time to put that theory to the test.
“If you could only enjoy one thing for the rest of your life, and have to give up all the others, would you choose fame, success, wealth or sex with beautiful women?” I ask.
“Um… um…” after a very long pause he says, “I couldn’t − they’ve all got to stay.”
“They can’t,” I reply. “Choose one. I want to know your key driving factor.”
“Okay, being happy.”
“So it’s official then: Mr Nasty is now Mr Happy?” I ask.
“Mr Nasty was never actually Mr Nasty,” he protests. “It was because the nasty producers put terrible people in front of him.”
Would he like that on his epitaph? “I’m not talking about death,” he says, “I’m only 59!”
But, on the subject of death, does he think there’s an afterlife?
“Not knowing is part of the fun. But hopefully, yes,” he muses. “Eric let a balloon off in the garden on my birthday and on the balloon it said: ‘Dear Grandma and Grandpa, I miss you and I love you very much.’ It was his idea to write it and the fact he believed made him so happy and his happiness made me happy.
“So sometimes it’s better to believe rather than be cynical. Let’s hope for the best.
“I think you and I will be heading in different directions at the end,” he jokes. “One of us will be going up and one of us will be going down − and we both know which one’s going down!”
“Well, I certainly can’t compete with the new halo-clad Simon Cowell, that’s for sure,” I laugh.
I’m not sure even Simon really believes he’s gone all soft and cuddly. That same old winner mentality still pervades his every waking moment − if you don’t believe me, just ask him about Terry Fator.
But he certainly seems as happy as I’ve ever known him, and he deserves to be. Because contrary to popular mythology, and even though he’ll hate me for saying this, Simon is one of the good guys.