Simon Cowell has made many, many mistakes in his life, and up until now has admitted to them all with good-natured embarrassment. In his record company days he turned down Take That, saying of Gary Barlow: ‘I don’t like the lead singer, he’s too fat.’ He also missed out on signing the Spice Girls, and failed to buy the song Hit Me Baby One More Time, which was a colossal, career- making hit for Britney Spears. More recently, he fired Louis Walsh from The X Factor and then realised he had blundered. And that’s not even mentioning his attempts to take Cheryl Cole to America. Despite all this, up until now his successes have been such that it has been possible to paint him as a Midas figure. He was ‘King Cowell’, the biggest star in the global television world — a man who had built a £200 million fortune on the basis of his seemingly unassail-able instincts for popular entertainment. But this week, as his shows were being beaten in the ratings on both sides of the Atlantic, a biography was published which — although unauthorised — he has fully co-operated with. And what a colossal mistake that co-operation turns out to have been. The book, by former BBC journalist Tom Bower, is titled Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life Of Simon Cowell, and it went on sale yesterday. Cowell learned that Bower was writing the book, and - after taking advice from one of Bower’s previous subjects, Bernie Ecclestone - decided that he should give the author a chance to get to know him. From May 2011 they spent many hours together. Bower went to The X Factor auditions in America last spring and spent a fortnight on Cowell’s rented yacht, The Slipstream, over New Year. He was there while Cowell flirted with diamond heiress Zeta Graff, and tried it on with singer Natalie Imbruglia, a former flame who gave him nothing more than a ‘kiss and cuddle’ on that occasion. Cowell also instructed many of his closest friends to speak to the biographer.
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