Simon Cowell Left Devastated By Father's Death
Simon Cowell The music mogul’s father Eric passed away in 1999, and Simon admits it is the hardest thing he has ever had to deal with. He was incredibly close to his dad, and never thought about a time when he would not be there to talk to.
“He was my best friend and he gave me so much advice and I will always remember that,” Simon said, close to tears. “It was a horrible, horrible, horrible time. You believe everyone is going to live forever and they don’t and all the stuff you think you care about, the hit records and stuff like that, it’s just meaningless.
“I can’t admit things, that’s why I can’t go to funerals and stuff like that. I find it very, very difficult to deal with that kind of reality. I shut myself off totally because it affects me so badly. And then, because I had to deal with that, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do – because I’d never lost anyone in my life. I just couldn’t’ accept it.”
Eric died on the same day Simon’s boyband Westlife scored their first UK number one single. The song, Swear It Again, had been picked by Eric, so Simon immediately rang his parents to tell them the good news.
The 50-year-old’s mother Julie couldn’t bear to ruin her son’s happiness by telling him the news about his father, so left it until a later conversation.
“It was the two positions of just total euphoria because I believed in the band and I wanted to share the news with my mum and dad – and then the news of what had happened and I had to go back to England,” Simon explained in an interview with TV host Piers Morgan. “I went back and realised that your first responsibility is that you have to look after your mum.”