It is a name which encapsulates, for some, the worst of modern day A&R; formulaic, short term, lowest common denominator pop. But the facts are more objective, highlighting his position as the most successful talent spotter – talent creator, even – in the global music industry.

Five years after making his TV debut on Pop Idol 2001, Cowell was involved in five of the biggest-selling albums in the UK last Christmas, two of which were among the biggest acts in the US last year, Kelly Clarkson and Il Divo.

After that run, one of his senior colleagues at Sony BMG suggested that Cowell is, pound for pound, the most valuable individual in the UK music industry, executive or artist.

Certainly, few can deny Cowell’s role in helping put songs and songwriting back at the heart of British music. Evidence of his firm insistence that behind every big hit is a big song can be detected in all of his success as an A&R, back to Five, Robson & Jerome and the earliest days of Westlife.

And in remodelling the good old fashioned talent show for a new generation - as X-Factor in the UK and American Idol in the US – Cowell has created two hugely successful vehicles for the classic song, in prime-time, with the biggest audiences of any music show on television in the new millenium.

Cowell, who is a PRS member with co-writing credits on the X-Factor theme, today spends most of his year split between the US and UK - X-Factor and his Syco company in London, American Idol and his string of other shows in the US.

It would be impossible to mistake his office at Sony BMG’s London headquarters, Bedford House in Fulham, for the home of any other executive. Outside his office door stands a full-size cut-out of the animated alter ego which was created for his appearance in The Simpsons – Cowell has become a guest staple in Hollywood, also appearing as himself in Scary Movie 3 and as a CGI-animated judge on Far Away Idol, in Shrek 2.

Inside his office, the walls are lined with discs reflecting his recording successes, including those of Westlife and Il Divo, the four-piece classical male group which was the biggest selling British signed act in the world last year.

For all his critics, Cowell is certainly proud of his success, as you might expect. The Simon Cowell who appears on X-Factor week-in, week-out is, pretty much, the same Simon Cowell who you find in the flesh. Cowell’s closest friends insist that he is a man who has never been afraid of voicing his opinion.

But what can be interpreted as arrogance is, in truth, more an aversion to anything less than straightforward honesty, a characteristic which also brings out a disarmingly surprising willingness to admit failure too.

Press Cowell on the biggest criticisms which are directed towards his approach to A&R - the short-termism which, to date, has produced precious few acts with apparent longevity – and his candour is clear.

‘From the US and the UK combined, if we are being honest, we have one international artist so far which is Kelly Clarkson, someone who has gone on to sell all over the world,’ he admits. ‘It’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a bad thing that we haven’t got more, but the good thing is that if she can do it, if we can find someone like that from the show, there’s no reason we can’t do that again.

‘You have to be optimistic and hope and believe that one year you are going to find someone who can become a true multi-platinum international artist. But there’s no guarantee. You just have a better chance with this show than you normally do when you sign an artist.’

And, ask Cowell how he manages to divide his time between two massive careers on both sides of the Atlantic and he deflects credit to those who surround him.

‘I wouldn’t know how to make a record or physically make a TV show,’ he says. ‘I just surround myself with good people who do it very well.’

'if we are being honest, we have one international artist so far…it’s a bad thing we haven’t got more but the good thing is there’s no reason we can’t do it again'

He adds, ‘The most important thing, whether running a record or TV company, is that it doesn’t matter how good the ideas are, someone has to execute them brilliantly. Over the years making records, great people have worked with me here, fantastic producers who make the dream a reality, and great artists.
‘It is the same principle in TV. When you make a record, you work with about five people; when you make a TV show, you have about 120 people.

‘I’ve been very lucky. When I got into TV, I had great producers to make the shows a hit. Now we are making more shows, we have to concentrate on the fact that we have to have great producers and I think I have some of the best producers in the world working with me.’

An open admirer of songwriters and the skill of songwriting, who stresses the importance of finding great songs for his artists, Cowell also insists that any successful music executive, or music company, must recognise the importance of the multiple entertainment platforms.

But don’t call Cowell a music executive. He much prefers to think of himself as an ‘entertainment executive’ these days; his Syco company is a multi-media entertainment operation, not a mere label or publishing operation.

Involving his company in TV is logical, he says; in partnership with Fremantle Media, Syco essentially controls the biggest promotional platform in the UK, X-Factor. Certainly, Cowell cannot imagine having a music company without a TV business as part of it.

‘I went into TV as a necessity,’ he says. ‘Five years ago, six years ago, there were probably 50 shows across terrestrial and non-terrestrial available for an artist. Now, when you look at how many TV shows there are, which I think is crucial to market a certain type of artist, there are not many around. You have to really scratch around to find 10 worthwhile TV shows that you can put an artist on.’

The problem, suggests Cowell, is that anyone looking to launch an act targeting 30-plus females would struggle to find the means to reach a mass audience through TV today. His solution has been to create that vehicle himself; this year’s X-Factor has featured a slot to feature guest artists, a move which has taken that vehicle to its logical extreme.

'I wouldn’t know how to make a record or physically make a TV show…I surround myself with good people who do it very well'

The great value of the show is that Syco owns label rights to the brand new act which it launches. X-Factor was initially devised as a show which pitches three talent spotters against each other, in an occasionally very bitter rivalry: Sharon Osbourne, Louis Walsh and Cowell. But it is perhaps the show’s most delicious irony that whoever wins out on the show, Cowell wins in real life, deriving a slice of the commercial action from the winning act.

But there is a broader synergy too in Syco’s ability to produce TV shows. When Sony BMG wants to produce a promotional vehicle, Syco can handle it – an example is the major’s production of a Take That documentary last autumn, through Syco. Syco derived income from the film, which received a terrestrial broadcast, and Sony BMG sold 1.5m Take That albums as a result.

Cowell’s success on TV in America hasn’t been limited to music shows. While American Inventor allows bedroom geeks to take their home-made gizmos and launch them onto the commercial market, America’s Got Talent is a traditional talent show, featuring light entertainment acts straight from the Opportunity Knocks book of turns. Both have been huge successes in the US, with the latter being prepared for launch in the UK next year.

The freedom to take such apparent risks comes from a relationship built on massive success in TV and music over recent years – unsurprisingly, perhaps, commercial sales success is a highly effective way of securing creative freedom – and a long-standing relationship going right back to Cowell’s first deal with BMG back in 1989.

‘We [at Syco] have an incredibly open relationship with Sony BMG, always have done,’ says Cowell. ‘They have always been very supportive of what we are doing. I’ve always tried to explain to them that there is a sanity to what we are doing; there are a few raised eyebrows when you announce that you are going to make a programme about inventions – “hold on a minute, you are in the record business!”

‘Sony BMG totally understand the rationale of what I’ve done here. We don’t run a company with a big overhead. Across the TV company and record label there are nine of us. So our overheads are really manageable. The record company has got more successful year-on-year, so that hasn’t suffered. And their openness makes it easy for me to work with them.’

Ask Cowell about the benefits of staying with Sony BMG – when he re-signed his deal last Autumn – rather than following the large cheques which were waved by other companies and a loyal and surprisingly modest character emerges.
‘Look, when I was on the open market, probably about 17 or 18 years ago, there was only one company who were prepared to back me and that was BMG. That support has been there for 18 years.

‘It’s easy to say, when you are successful, “I will go and do this elsewhere”, but I felt, particularly when we did this last negotiation, that there was still this debt from me to them I had to pay off.’