30 August 2023 , 19:30
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A few years ago, if you’d told Simon Cowell he’d be playing football in his sixties in his garden with his son - let alone in the morning - he would have roared with laughter.
A notorious workaholic always glued to his emails, he lived a nocturnal, vampire-like lifestyle and was barely out of bed until mid-afternoon. Daylight - never mind fatherhood - was firmly out of the question. But here we are at Simon’s house and he’s been up for hours with nine-year-old son Eric...and it’s not even midday.
“I mean playing football at 63, I mean, that’s not bad going, is it?” Simon laughs. “I mean, he’s beating me, but I could just about keep up.” To say Simon has embraced fatherhood is an understatement.
Simon’s struggle to navigate a path through this grief - while holding down his X Factor job in the glare of the public eye - is explored in the Mirror’s Men in Mind podcast, in association with the charity Mind.
Simon shares son Eric with his fiancée Lauren Silverman (FilmMagic)
He says having therapy has helped him become a better dad to Eric (Internet Unknown)Mind’s research found that two in five men admit to regularly feeling worried or low. “One of the reasons I want to do this (podcast)..is to say that if anybody is just feeling a bit down, vulnerable or lost…talk openly to your friends about it, or see a therapist or talk to your doctor,” he says.
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“Because, I promise you, there’s nothing negative doing that at all.” His recent decision to have therapy, which he revealed in yesterday’s Mirror, was a decision fully backed by Lauren.
“She got it in a heartbeat. She didn’t look at me like there was something wrong with me. She was the opposite,” he explains. “She was like, ‘I’m really happy that you’re doing this, Simon. I think it’s really going to be helpful for you to have someone outside of your work friends, people you already know, just to be able to talk about yourself, about anything you want. And if it helps, it helps.’ And she saw the difference I think in about three or four weeks.”
Like many Brits, Simon says he had a preconceived notion about therapy from watching American TV while growing up. “There would always be talk about going to therapy and I always used to think everyone’s being dramatic or over the top. It was very much, as a Brit, I just couldn’t relate to it in any way whatsoever.
The X Factor boss spoke candidly to the Mirror's Head of Showbiz, Tom Bryant (Phil Harris)“So, I never took it seriously, as something to do for myself, if I’m being honest with you.” But he had a change of heart after struggling mentally during the pandemic, as well as on the advice of his friends who waxed lyrical about its benefits.
“It was only having gone through something pretty traumatic that I realised,” he says.“Things are so complicated in life anyway. Why not find someone to help you? Days now are filled with unexpected pleasures.
“I couldn’t go out on a morning bike ride before or the thought of playing football with a nine-year-old would’ve been, ‘What!’ on the weekend. I just wouldn’t think like that. I mean, it sounds corny, but I mean, literally a sunny day or when it’s raining, I mean, all those things I love. I mean, I really, really do.”
Simon is the first guest on the Mirror's Men in Mind podcastAnd, intriguingly, he believes that his new therapy-honed outlook on life has not only added years to his career, but means he is capable of producing better work. “I’m 64 this year and I intend to carry on working for quite a few more years,” he says. “And maybe that’s, again, one of the reasons why I did decide to do this, because I always want to do better. I always want to learn more.
“And like I said, I have a nine-year-old who is the most active kid in the world. I mean, literally from the minute he wakes up in fact. “Daddy, daddy, daddy.” Just before he goes to sleep, “Daddy, daddy, daddy.” And I have to keep up with him.”
Alex Bushill, Head of Media & PR at Mind, said: “We are delighted to be supporting the Mirror’s podcast series Men in Mind, which aims to raise awareness in its male audiences by speaking to a range of high-profile figures, such as Simon Cowell, about their own mental health journey. “Although talking isn’t the whole solution, we know from our own research that 1 in 5 people have spoken to a loved one about their own mental health as a result of hearing a celebrity speak out about theirs.
“Reaching more men is particularly important, with more than a quarter of men telling us that the main thing stopping them from seeking help is embarrassment. We hope that the Men in Mind podcast sparks important conversations around men’s mental health, as well as encouraging more men who might need some support to take that first step.”
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Find us on Apple podcasts, or go to podfollow.com/meninmind. For further support and advice around mental health see mind.org.uk