Will fatherhood change playboy Simon Cowell?

August 26th, 2013

Peter Nolan

Simon Cowell is having his first child with New York socialite Lauren Silverman, the estranged wife of one of Cowell’s good friends. Picture: AP
Source: AP

Simon Cowell and Lauren Silverman. Picture: Splash
Source: DailyTelegraph

WHEN youre worth a reported $300 million, a hiccup like fathering a baby with your friends wife wont keep you from female companionship.

And so there was Simon Cowell at last week’s London premiere of “One Direction: This Is Us” — a softball doc opening Friday and featuring the British boy band launched on Cowell’s “The X Factor” — walking the red carpet with not one but two women.

Companion 1A: Sinitta, a pop singer who dated Cowell in the mid-1980s and has, like many of the man’s former flames, strangely remained close friends with him.

Companion 1B: Mezhgan Hussainy, an “American Idol” makeup artist to whom Cowell was engaged, until the couple split in 2011. (Don’t cry for her: She received an $8 million Beverly Hills mansion as a parting gift.)

Conspicuously absent was Lauren Silverman, Cowell’s baby-mama-to-be and now ex-wife of New York real estate mogul Andrew Silverman. In happier times, the couple had been fixtures on Cowell’s 193-foot chartered yacht, Slipstream.

Cowell’s affair and baby drama is only surprising to those who haven’t been paying attention. The TV host has long been one of the world’s great playboys, living a decadent life filled with luxurious vacations, expensive cars and, of course, loads of beautiful, often exotic women.

“Simon is a teenage boy, basically, when it comes to his love life,” says Chas Newkey-Burden, author of “Simon Cowell: The Unauthorized Biography.” “He likes certain types of women and a certain amount of contact, but no intimacy or longevity.”

Like a teenage boy, Cowell, 53, seems to favor pin-ups. Jackie St. Clair, whom he spotted at a London nightclub in 1982 and went on to date, was a former Miss Nude UK.

Louise Payne appeared topless in The Sun newspaper and dated Cowell beginning in 1995 after they met at a music industry party. After a few weeks of frustration, the two consummated their relationship at New York’s Four Seasons hotel and Cowell proposed on the spot, according to Tom Bower’s “Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell.” A few weeks later, Cowell called off the engagement.

He hooked up with stripper Georgina Law in 2000, later saying she couldn’t sing but that she had “talents in other areas.” If that’s not TMI for you, there’s this: He picked up Alicia Douvall at a hotel bar in London in 2001, and she boasted they had sex 11 times on their third date.

Late last year, Cowell was seeing former “Baywatch” babe Carmen Electra — though evidently not seriously enough for her to earn a house upon breakup. “She’s not my girlfriend. We’re people who date,” Cowell said on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show.

He also had a brief fling with British “X Factor” judge Dannii Minogue. “I had a crush on her,” Cowell said in “Sweet Revenge.” “It was Dannii’s hair, the sexy clothes, and the t - - s.”

Despite his womanizing, Cowell has kept many of his exes in his life, taking the ladies to parties or on Mediterranean vacations — often a few of them together. He is rumored to rent an A house for his favorite companions and a less-extravagant B house for the second-tier.

Ex Terri Seymour, an underwear model and TV host who dated “The X Factor” judge in the mid-2000s, said in 2010 that she still speaks to him as often as “10 times a day.” St. Clair planned Cowell’s 50th birthday party four years ago.

You gotta wonder why the women wouldn’t run the other way — besides the $300 million, that is. Especially when Cowell has admitted that he’s not exactly great husband or boyfriend material.

He bores easily. He’s a workaholic. He forbids his girlfriends from asking him questions after 11 p.m. He’d rather eat French fries than fine French food. He begins most mornings by watching cartoons in the bathtub. He smokes Kools. He reportedly gets semi-annual Botox treatments from a London doctor and travels with two large suitcases full of beauty creams and elixirs.

“Now I can use the mirror,” Seymour famously joked after she and Cowell broke up.

So why do his exes stay in his so-called “harem”?

“There was never much real intimacy in his relationships. He struggles with intimacy,” Newkey-

Burden says. “There’s a possibility that these women are staying [with him], searching for what they never got. If you don’t get it, then afterwards, you might hang around.”

Cowell has said that the love he has for his former girlfriends is eternal. “For me, whether it’s Jackie, Mezhgan, Sinitta or Terri, they will be in my life forever,” he told Metro. “I genuinely love them.”

He then added, “I’m aware that I can get girls because I’m on TV.”

Baby or no baby, Cowell better get what he can now, because there are signs that he might have peaked.

His much-hyped follow-up to “American Idol,” “The X Factor” (which his company Syco produces), is only a modest hit. Last season’s finale was down 18 percent from the first season’s, and inaugural winner Melanie Amaro has yet to release an album. “American Idol,” too, seems to be losing steam, in part because Cowell has left the judging panel. The show has shed some 10 million viewers in two years, averaging 13.2 million.

Across the pond, Britain has slowly turned against its once-prized export. A long list of music stars have criticized Cowell and the UK’s version of “The X Factor,” including Elton John, Roger Daltrey and Charlotte Church, who said the show is “killing music.”

Earlier this summer, “Britain’s Got Talent” contestant Natalie Holt pelted the once-invincible Cowell with eggs as a protest against him having “too much power and influence in the entertainment industry.”

Cowell wasn’t always so powerful. After he dropped out of high school, his father secured him a mailroom job at EMI in 1976. Cowell spun the opportunity into an undistinguished career as an artists-and-repertoire man before going broke when his company collapsed, forcing him to move back in with his parents at age 33.

Cowell later called his failure a “relief.” He started again, eventually landing at RCA. Cowell did not have especially deep knowledge of bands or spend every night hunting for fresh acts. When asked how he discovered new music, he once said by reading the newspapers to “see what people want.”

His search for populist material led him to produce 1993’s “WrestleMania: The Album” and songs for the kids TV show “Teletubbies” in 1997. At one meeting, another exec literally got down on his knees and begged Cowell to stop producing “rubbish,” says Newkey-Burden.

“Cowell’s talent is shamelessness, and I say that admiringly,” Newkey-Burden says. “He works in the entertainment industry, where a lot of people tie themselves up in a quest for credibility. He doesn’t give a damn about credibility. He wants money and power and success.”

“My definition of credibility is public acceptance,” Cowell told London’s Sunday Times Magazine. “If I was asked, ‘Would you rather have a show seen by 3 million people and considered a masterpiece, or a show seen by 30 million with people saying it’s horrible reality TV?’ I’ll take the ratings, thank you.”

His reign over TV may be winding down, but Cowell is still a force in music. One Direction continues to conquer teen pop, and Cowell’s Brit girl group Little Mix is beginning to make waves in the US.

“He has just as much musical clout as he used to,” says Shirley Halperin, music editor at The Hollywood Reporter. “He has everything at his fingertips you need to be one of the most powerful people in music. The question is the talent. Because he relies on the public vote to find his talent, it’s a seesaw.”

And what of his baby scandal? Cowell got famous, in part, for his bad-boy image, but could this be a step too far?

“At the end of the day, it probably won’t hurt him,” says Steven Fink, president of Lexicon Communications and author of “Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message.” “It depends on how he handles it. He followed his heart and it was unfortunate, but it’s not a crime.”

This story originally appeared on The New York Post.

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