Simon Cowell

PROFILE

BIOGRAPHY

Simon Phillip Cowell (born 7 October 1959) is a British music executive, television producer and entrepreneur. He is known in the United Kingdom and in the United States for his role as a talent judge on TV shows such as Pop Idol, The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent, and American Idol. He is also the owner of the television production and music publishing house Syco.

Cowell is notorious as a judge for his blunt and often controversial criticisms, insults and wisecracks about contestants and their abilities. Cowell is known for combining activities in the television and music industries, having promoted singles and records for various artists, including television personalities. He was most recently featured on the fourth series of Britain's Got Talent and the ninth season of American Idol.

Cowell was born in Brighton, East Sussex, England and brought up in Elstree, Hertfordshire.His father, Eric Philip Cowell, was an estate agent developer and music industry executive, and his mother, Julie Brett (née Josie Dalglish), is a former ballet dancer and socialite.Cowell's paternal grandparents, Joseph Cowell and Esther Malinsky, were English Jews,and his maternal grandfather was Scottish. He has one brother and two half-brothers; younger brother Nicholas Cowell, half-brother Tony Cowell, and half-brother Michael Cowell. Michael is the oldest, followed by Tony, Simon and Nicholas respectively.

Cowell attended the independent school Dover College as did his brother, but left early before attending the sixth form. He took a few menial jobs—including, according to Tony, working as a runner on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining—but did not get along well with colleagues and bosses, until his father who was executive at the recording giant EMI Music Publishing, managed to get him a job in the mail room.

His father's connections originally got him rehired as the assistant to an A&R man. From there onwards, Simon worked his way up and eventually got promoted to a music publishing position but left during the early 1980s to form E&S Music with his boss at EMI, Ellis Rich (later Chairman of the Performing Right Society). The company had several hit records at one point with five singles in the UK top 40.

In 2006, Cowell signed to two more record-breaking deals. In the USA, he agreed to remain as a judge on American Idol, earning £20 million ($33 million) per season for another five years. He also has a deal with FOX which allows his production company to broadcast Got Talent and American Inventor on other networks, but he may not appear on them. In the UK, he signed a "golden handcuffs" deal with ITV, worth approximately £6.5 million a year for three years, which gave ITV rights to his talent show The X Factor, a British singing talent show, and Grease Is The Word, a musical talent show to find the stars of a Grease production in London's