Saturday Oct 3 2009

Simon Cowell's mother had just put the finishing touches to her make-up before gliding down the swirling staircase. It was Christmas Day in 1963 and she was feeling radiant in her cropped suit and movie star white mink hat.

"What do you think, darling? Does Mummy look pretty?" she asked her four-year-old son as he played in the hallway with his new train set.

He looked up and his eyes quickly focused in on the furry hat. "Mum, you look like a poodle."

Cowell, who turns 50 on Wednesday, has amassed an estimated €130m fortune being rude for a living since dishing out his first insult that fateful Christmas day. And now the highest-paid British star on US television is set to see his wealth soar after hammering out a €70m deal with Fox TV to bring The X Factor stateside.

He already earns around €40m for every series of American Idol -- the show is in its ninth season.

So how did someone who can't sing, can't play an instrument, doesn't produce records or write songs and can't even work a computer make a fortune in the music business? Well, it actually took some time before everything Mr Nasty touched turned to gold.

Cowell started at the bottom rung of the ladder when, after dropping out of school aged 17, his father, a successful executive at EMI, landed him a job in the mailroom. When he was eventually promoted to the music publishing department, he made it his business to absorb all around him, until he eventually left in the mid 1980s to establish his own independent record label. But despite scoring some chart success, the venture collapsed and Cowell, aged 30, was declared bankrupt and was back living at home with his parents.

"I found the whole thing quite a relief," he recalled recently. "Everything went -- my house, my Porsche, all the things I thought were important. I was quite happy, really. I didn't feel the slightest bit embarrassed that I was living with my parents, had no money and my car was worth £7,000. Couldn't have cared less."

Then Cowell struck gold. He was watching ITV's Soldier Soldier when Robson Green and Jerome Flynn launched into the Righteous Brothers' 'Unchained Melody'. After discovering there were no plans to release it, he rang them persistently until they caved in after he promised to make them a lot of money. The record became the top-selling British single of 1995.

Cowell quickly cornered the market in shamelessly tacky novelty records and signed up the Teletubbies, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and World Wrestling Federation star the Undertaker. "If you can sell 82,000 stadium seats, chances are you're going to sell a few hundred thousand records alongside that," he said, when others in the industry questioned why anyone would sign a wrestler.

While he had fleeting success with more credible acts, such as Curiosity Killed the Cat and 5ive, it was the signing of Westlife, who went on to score more UK number one hits than anyone except Elvis Presley and the Beatles, that truly turned Cowell from mere man to mogul.

When he reluctantly agreed to judge a new talent show called Pop Idol in 2001, he did so purely for business reasons. "The only reason that I put myself through this pain is because my label gets the artist," Cowell, who has always considered himself an entrepreneur rather than a music man, openly admitted. "I'm interested only in making money, for myself and the people I work for," he revealed in an interview with Playboy. "I mean, that's absolutely the only criterion I attach. That's it."

He claims the other key factor behind his success is the fact he is not a sophisticated, cool culture vulture, but Mr Average.

"In TV, film and music there's a lot of snobbery, and I don't like it," he said. "I've never been a cultural snob. If I don't like French food, that doesn't make me a lesser person. I don't have sophisticated tastes. I have average tastes. If you looked in my collection of DVDs, you'd see Jaws and Star Wars. In the book library you'd see John Grisham and Sidney Sheldon. And if you look in my fridge, it's like children's food -- chips, milk shakes, yogurt."

In fact, his tastes are so conservatively mainstream he derides Bob Dylan as a "singing poet" that bores him to tears, adding: "If I had 10 Dylans in the final of American Idol, we would not be getting 30 million viewers a week."

His scathing criticisms and brutally honest remarks quickly turned Cowell into a prime-time villain that would give JR Ewing a run for his money. Pop Idol's first season attracted over 11 million viewers and American Idol drew 22 million for the first season finale.

Cowell set up S Records in 2002 and signed up the top two finalists of the first season of Pop Idol, who both went on to have number one hits in the UK. He then sold his half-share in S Records to BMG for €25m.

But any suggestions the rude remarks that have made him one of the most powerful people in television on both side of the Atlantic are unjust are firmly shot down by the mogul, who believes in the entertainment industry you have to be cruel to be kind.

"All I'm saying on the show is, look, it's really difficult if you're good. It's actually impossible if you're average. So let me allow you to do something with your life that you're good at, rather than give you a stupid comment like 'With a few singing lessons everything will turn around.' Well, it won't. So I think people understand that I'm sort of being kind, actually."

But as much as Simon Cowell is known for his no-nonsense, politically incorrect and brutally honest critiques, his other trademark is the requisite black Armani T-shirt, of which he owns 30.

He is a fussy dresser, and, despite his man boobs, is obsessed with his appearance, continually fusses over his hair and admits to having botox and his teeth veneered.

The man with the X Factor has had a string of girlfriends over the years, including some fleeting relationships with strippers -- "Well, who wouldn't want to date a stripper? I mean, this is a girl who's comfortable taking her clothes off in public. Fantastic."

However, he remains a confirmed bachelor, as the one thing that truly terrifies him is marriage.

"I don't believe in marriage, certainly not in this business. The truth is that you get married and in a year or two, they clean you out! It's just not going to work," he has been quoted as saying. "We have contracts with artists that are 120 pages long and last five years. Then you go into marriage with no contract and the laws are a thousand years old.

"It doesn't work -- it changes you. That whole culture just puts you in a very weakened position."

But despite his mega millions, Cowell has relatively modest tastes. His black T-shirts cost around €60, his jeans about €120, he only takes one vacation a year and he doesn't even own an iPod.

His only real extravagances in life are cars (his pride and joy is a Bugatti Veyron super car) and houses (he has several in Beverly Hills and London).

But is the straight-talking, snide superstar with the massive ego we see on television a true reflection of the man himself? "If you ask my friends if the person on TV is who they know in real life, most would say I'm exactly like that."

But when it comes to summing up the mega millionaire, the last word has to go to Louis Walsh. "What's the difference between God and Simon Cowell? God doesn't walk round Knightsbridge thinking he's Simon Cowell!"

Irish Independent

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