PROFILE: SIMON COWELL:His brutally honest put-downs have made him the bane of the talentless, and helped make him one of the richest and most influential men in the music biz; when 'X Factor' returns to our screens tonight, all eyes will be on the real star
‘There are only so many words I can drag out of my vocabulary to say how awful you were.” Simon Cowell, king of the cashmere jumper and the crushing critique, returns to our television screens this weekend for the fifth series of the phenomenally successful singing contest, The
X Factor
. Come Saturday night, Cowell, a sardonic smile stitched to his well-buffed and Botox-enhanced face, will lean back in his familiar chair, cross his hirsute forearms and prepare to listen to many hundreds of renditions of
The Wind Beneath My Wings
while his bank accounts fatten and his celebrity grows.
Any number of emotive torch songs will be variously screeched and sobbed at Cowell and his fellow judges, Louis Walsh, Dannii Minogue and Simon’s protege and pet, singer Cheryl Cole. Over the past number of months thousands of starstruck wannabes from across the UK and Ireland, from hopeful, nervy teens to resolute, warbling octogenarians, have waited in rain and shine to be seen by Cowell, the staggeringly successful A&R man and music and television producer, who is lovingly referred to on both sides of the Atlantic as “Mr Nasty”.
Part of Cowell's box-office appeal seems to lie in his formidable reputation for not suffering the tuneless, the arrogant or the self-delusional, and he is master of the deadpan put-down ("if your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning"). But as he himself unsparingly puts it: "Sit in these auditions for three weeks and hear I Believe I Can Flyout of tune for the millionth time, and you try and be nice."
The unparalleled draw of The X Factor, for both contestant and viewer alike, is that while some 17-year-old from Essex or Ennistymon, who has been hogging the mirror and singing into her hairbrush all summer, may have to spend hours freezing her purple thighs off in an outdoor queue as she shuffles towards the show's registration desk, the possibility remains that within a couple of months she could be signing a one-million-pound recording contract and releasing the Christmas Number One single. A staggering 10,000 optimists turned up to audition for the forthcoming series when the X Factorcaravan pulled into the Old Trafford stadium in Manchester in April of this year and, as every reality TV pundit will tell you, the man who holds the keys to all those fragile dreams is Simon Cowell.
SIMON PHILLIP COWELL is the restless, flighty son of a record company executive and a former ballerina turned socialite. Now approaching his 50th birthday, he has spent 30 years working in the music industry, having started out in the mailroom of EMI Music Publishing (thanks to his patient and supportive father, Eric), and is the man credited with transforming the television and musical landscape in Britain.
His prospects were not always so rosy. Having left EMI in the early 1980s, Cowell eventually co-founded the subsidiary label, Fanfare Records, and signed his first artist, Sinitta. Despite initial success, Fanfare became bankrupt at the end of the decade, forcing Cowell to move back into his parents’ house. Within months, however, he had refashioned himself as an AR consultant and begun a lucrative relationship with BMG, for whom he signed such acts as Westlife and Robson and Jerome.
Poignantly, it was on the day that Cowell broke through to the Number One spot with Westlife that his father died of a heart attack.
As producer and presenter of The X Factorand Britain's Got Talent,and with both shows having American equivalents ( America's Got Talentand American Idol), Cowell is now among the most highly paid and influential individuals in transatlantic cultural life.
Alongside these blockbusting television shows, produced by his company, Syco (now to be known as Greenwell Entertainment due to a joint venture with retail businessman Sir Philip Green), Cowell is also credited with producing more than 70 Number One hit records and engineering in excess of 100 million album sales.
Among the artists under Cowell's wing is the 2006 X Factorwinner Leona Lewis, who became the first British female for 20 years to top the American Hot 100 Billboard singles chart with Bleeding Love, which was also the UK's biggest-selling record of 2007. Further evidence of his almost frightening ability to give the public what they want before they even know they want it is provided by his role as producer of the pop operatic quartet, Il Divo. Apparently, after listening to Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman duet, Cowell had a eureka moment in the form of a new and sudden appreciation of classical music and well-trained voices. He then spent two years trawling the world for young vocalists, ending up with a Spanish opera singer, two classically trained tenors (one Swiss, one American) and, adding a bit of Gallic seasoning, a French pop singer. He popped them all into the Cowell blender and came up with a classical boyband that has, to date, sold more than 18 million albums worldwide, wowing both stadiums full of football fans and lonely stay-at-home girls with cuddly toys and giant-sized chocolate bars.
WHILE COWELLnonchalantly bathes in love and hate on both sides of the Atlantic, and while the superlatives and insults ("the greatest British export since The Beatles", "the evil ringmaster") rain down in equal measure on his trademark blunted hairstyle, the numbers continuously crunch in his direction. Reportedly earning €23m for each season of American Idol, he has also had the last four Christmas Number One singles in Britain, all of which have been courtesy of X Factorwinners signed by his Syco label. And although his personal income is difficult to determine, it is estimated that he earns in the region of €70m a year (his company also produces several other franchised shows including American Inventorand Grease is the Word). Amusingly, when offered a million-dollar contract to be the face of Viagra, Cowell turned down the offer on the basis that it was insulting (although whether it was his sexual prowess or his financial stature that he felt was being slighted wasn't quite clear).
"The audience love to boo him, but secretly we're all in love with this sharp-tongued, brutally truthful, high-waisted fairy godmother and wish we had his confidence and ability to tap into the goldmines of international and generational entertainment." Such was the verdict of actress Emilia Fox, spokeswoman for last year's Sunday Telegraphsurvey of the 100 most influential people in British culture, which put Cowell in sixth place. In the charts and rising, as Jimmy Savile used to say.
Cowell, who has homes in the US and England, who doesn’t want his life complicated by pets or babies and whose diary is scheduled up to two years in advance, is currently single. It is probably fair to say that this state of affairs is not altogether loathsome for Mr Nasty, given that he has spoken about many women being somehow compelled to put their hands down his trousers rather than shake the hand he proffers them. Despite the giddying heights of celebrity and a vast fortune, Cowell, with disarming honesty, has spoken about the darker side of his glittering career, his bouts of depression and irritability.
“If I went to a psychiatrist, it would be a long session,” he has said. “I do have a number of issues that probably need dealing with. I get very dark moods for no reason. You can be having the best time of your life and yet you’re utterly and totally miserable. I get to points in my life where I sometimes think I’m never going to be happy.”
ONE SUSPECTS, however, that the music mogul's bouts of depression may simply be his nervous system pleading for a break from continuously digging largely insipid nuggets of popular music from an ultimately pretty dank mine of wannabes.
Also, if he is so ruddy miserable, why does he want to be cryogenically frozen? It was recently reported that, at a private dinner hosted by British prime minister Gordon Brown, Cowell revealed his plans to have his body preserved in liquid nitrogen.
“I’ve decided to freeze myself when I die. Medical science is bound to work out a way of bringing us back to life in the next century. I want to be available when they do. I would be doing the nation an invaluable service,” he is alleged to have said.
One hopes, for the sake of future generations, that Cowell had his tongue firmly ensconced in his cosmetically prettified cheek .
CV Simon Cowell
Who is he?Multi-millionaire music and television mogul, credited with transforming the television and musical landscape in the UK.
Why is he in the news?The X Factorjuggernaut pulls on to our television screens this weekend for its fifth season.
Most appealing characteristic:His untrammelled honesty to contestants, which borders on brutality.
Least appealing characteristic:His untrammelled honesty to contestants, which borders on brutality, and his alarmingly high-waisted trousers.
Most likely to say:"My kidney is in the ice-bucket."
Least likely to say:"Give us a blast of I Believe I Can Fly. Just for fun."