Idol Worship

And that very well may be. I'd hung out on the American Idol set several years ago and had seen Abdul in Cowell-induced tears even when the cameras weren't rolling. Plus, there's a long, sordid history to Cowell's verbal high jinks, starting from the age of three when he told his mom, all gussied up for a party, that she reminded him of a poodle. But this time around, in London, I see nothing of the sort. The Cowell I see is many things -- among them charming, boorish, polite, concerned, obscene, honest, open and evil, maybe -- but rude, not once.

* * * *

His early years were privileged ones: his mother a dancer; his late father a successful real estate man; the family, which also includes one younger brother, three half brothers and one half sister, all living north of London, in blissful ease, on a leafy baronial estate named Abbots Meade. By age five he had almost burned down the house twice; on one of those occasions he lit on fire a Father Christmas costume to prove to his younger brother, Nicholas, that Father Christmas couldn't exist and soon surely wouldn't exist. Four years later, when he was nine, Cowell succumbed to an urge to start smoking and drinking. The cigarettes he filched from ashtrays; the drinks he walked off with during family parties when no one was looking. He consumed his contraband mainly in the ten-acre garden out back, often in an igloo hand-built from a collection of twigs and finished off with a long, dark entrance tunnel designed to intimidate and frighten off nosy elders. The structure lasted until the day Cowell left a lit cigarette behind and "the whole thing went whoosh."

One time, while on a bus, he pointed a toy gun at the driver and told him to keep the bus moving, which the driver did for ten terrorized miles. Cowell had been joking, of course, but how was the driver to know?

At their wits' end, his parents sent him away to boarding school. He dropped out two years later, at sixteen, shortly after distinguishing his academic career with a four-month suspension for drinking.

A bit later, he landed a mailroom job in the publishing division of EMI Records.

* * * *

Cowell's current office, located up five flights inside the Sony BMG building on Fulham High Street, in London, is austere. The only personal touches I can see are a number of award plaques on one wall, a small framed picture of him with his girlfriend, another of him and his mom.

Pulling close to his meticulously organized desk, Cowell removes a cigarette from a pack of Kools and lights up, in violation of company policy. "What are they going to do, fire me?" he says. "Ha!" I tell him I recently quit, whereupon he picks up his Kools and offers me one. The only thing he says about this offer is, "I'm looking after you."

Cigarette refused, we begin with a few preliminaries.

ME: Were you ever humiliated as a child?
COWELL: Nothing in particular stands out.
ME: Have any recurring nightmares?
COWELL: No.
ME: Any recurring dreams at all?
COWELL: No.
ME: Were you ever caught masturbating by your mother or father?
COWELL: No!
ME: Your two longest relationships have been with Terri and a woman named Sinitta?
COWELL: Look, there've been a lot of quick ones in between.
ME: How long was the shortest?
COWELL: A day? An hour? A minute?