Simon Cowell reveals his worst thing in the world and how proud he is of Eric

Simon Cowell reveals a lot about himself in an excellent podcast 'How to Fail' with Elizabeth Day. Talking about his social struggles, money woes and becoming a dad with Eric.

Simon shares how he struggles at parties and events with small talk and is actually very shy, He considers himself "socially inept' making small talk with strangers. "It's my worst thing in the world making small talk with people I don't know. If we have a common subject. then I'm pretty good."

He went on to say it's been "torture" in some circumstances though. "Years ago if I had to go to a party, particularly where you have to stand up, with a drink, with horrible food, and just talk to people you don't know, it's torture."

"Once I was known by people, it was kind of good because it broke the ice with people you meet." Simon said: "Instantly they know you. You're talking about something I like, which is the shows or the artists, or whatever, so it kind of helped me with my shyness."

“Lauren is brilliant in these positions. I’m hopeless. At one time we were invited to Joan Collins birthday party. “I said to Lauren, ‘ok, I’ll go, but we have to time it, because there will be a horrible stand-up pre-drinks - I can’t do that'.

“I thought we had timed it well. We didn’t. For 45 minutes I had to talk to people and I was dying inside. “I was so stressed by the time I got to the table. I left after 30 minutes because I couldn’t deal with it.” 

Surprisingly, he also spoke about his fears of not having enough money, saying 'he hasn't made 'anywhere near as much money' as people think', This particularly came to light during covid when he though his projects could be cancelled.

'I always worry about money because I think you have to in a way. You think about Covid as an example. 'I remember reading it for the first time on a website, and I don't read a lot of stuff on social media, but I'd heard about it, so I was curious.

'Second day, the story got bigger to a point where I actually phoned my partner and I said "I don't like the look of this, I have a horrible feeling it's going to be like that movie Contagion, and I think we need to get all of our shows into production around the world quicker this year". And we did.

'And when it happened it was obviously worse than I could have imagined,

'When you think about that, the wars, and everything else, the instability, what is safe? Is it gold, cash, stocks. I don't think anything's safe any longer.

'Someone did actually say to me once "live in your money". And it was really good advice, i.e, enjoy it, and be happy with it, but understand that the world is precarious.'

'I've made a lot, I'm not going to lie. I've made a bit of money, yes, but not that much as is reported'

'There was a point where maybe I felt I haven't done as well as I thought, maybe that's what I want.' 'And I did start to mix with some of those people for a couple of years. And I'm going to be honest with you, I hated it. I didn't like the people.' 'I thought they were obnoxious, I thought they were snobby. 'I think a lot of those people thought they were better than other people because they had money, which is ridiculous when you think about it.'

'I remember saying to Lauren, ''Do we actually know anyone who's rich - I mean super-rich - and happy?''. 'She went, ''no'', and I went, ''nor me''.

Simon also talked about the new boyband show he is putting together, He didn't want to give much away, but did say "I just had this nagging thing in the back of my mind going, 'What was the happiest time in my life?' And it's always been working with bands. I've loved that energy when you find that first person, second person and so forth, to their first record or their first tour. It's so hard to articulate that excitement," he continued. "I thought well maybe there hasn't been a band like One Direction or Little Mix for so many years, why not do it again? Honestly, it was one of the scariest things I've ever done. But I had to do it."

The Simon also added that he thinks he's found a new boyband and the show should launch in a few months,

Simon proudly spoke about Eric, saying when he was born 'ok, now I have a purpose".

When. Simon's mum passed away he said he thought his world had ended. "At that point I had made some money and thought what was it for, I was broken".

"Fortunately, thank god, even though the circumstances weren't perfect at that point as mum had dementia she met Eric, she always wanted me to be a dad and she adored him, just adored him".

Both Lauren and Eric helped him through one of his most difficult times.

He said he can see both his mum and dad in him with Eric sharing his mums sense of humour and kindness.

"Everything my mum and dad taught me I can now teach him, which is fantastic"

You can watch the full podcast here: