Interesting - the half dozen mentions for me in the book all have minor errors and mistakes in them.

I never got to take Nigel Grainge and Chris Hill to lunch with Simon - that was, I'm convinced, why the relationship didn't work; yet Bower invents a lunch at a non existent Chinese restaurant.

And it was myself who turned down the numerous begging offers (and massive monies) from Nigel Lythgoe and ITV to be Mr Nasty on Pop Stars. And me who suggested Simon instead (and then advised him not to do it).

Still, the book seems pretty positive and pro Simon - Bower kept his word; he promised me he was not doing an attack job and, indeed, I think Simon will be delighted by it.

I have to say I have enjoyed reading about Simon Cowell the only a&r popstar on the planet.
Are you close to him JK?

Read the book KZ - he wouldn't be what he is today were it not for JK.

I see it's available to download (at £12.99 from Apple), but despite a try, I still prefer to read good old fashioned physical books, so I'll wait until it's discounted somewhere.

I see the old boss of Jive Records, Steve Jenkins, has a new book out. Anybody read it yet?

www.amazon.co.uk/Steve-Jenkins-The-Futur...334929506&sr=1-1

JK. Did you ever have any business dealings with Steve?

Knew Steve very well Dixie - I was a consultant to Jive for several very happy years.
Mistakes on every page of Bower's book; my favourite is his name of Cowell's band Instant Replay and their "hit" YELL.
Really Tom - Google is (or should have been) your friend.

Bower attributes Simon Fuller for suggesting PHONE VOTES - bollocks; Simon Cowell actually asked my permission as it had been my idea and very successful in the Record of the Year Show, three years earlier.

I think I've got 2 books to read over the next few days.

I love the book and have learned a lot about the man and what eventually led to his success.
If I do recall, JK, you used phone votes with Love City Groove didn't you? I remember seeing
it on a Eurovision show in the 90s. I am gonna have a read through your own biog JK

Yes KZ - I started phone voting on Radio Two that year (technology had only just allowed it) and sat in Terry Wogan's control room monitoring votes and dropping many when they came from the candidate's home town!

Then onto TV - then onto Eurovision but only a few countries to start with; then we spread it to all countries.

I used it for our Record of the Year Show in 1998 and Simon won the second year with Flying Without Wings. He adored my show and asked my permission to use phone votes for Pop Idol.

What I find most interesting about Simon Cowell's story is his carving out
a path of his own out of the failures he suffered. I also find it interesting
that he was incredibly loyal to Sinitta and tried time and time again to make
a career for her. I also find that he is impatient with artists and has a low
attention span. He is quite similar to you JK in a lot of ways (musically that is).

Also very interestingly I think Amazon has a bloody good blueprint with their Kindle
store which can be applied to music or exploited by the music industry.
The delivery of the Kindle cloud service is excellent and I found reading ebooks a lot
more enjoyable than hitherto with PDF. Also the sample feature is brilliant and enables
you to determine if you like a book enough to buy it.

One thing that has been mentioned on here about the new model is to carve out your
own way and business model. This is 100% true and often you just stumble into it.
Cowell stumbled into the TV model and was incredibly naive in his relationship with
Simon Fuller who by the way had form for shafting people (Spice Girls).

He was not a brilliant music a&r person as shown with the way Girl Thing were handled
and some of his other acts were awful but he found his way.

Stuff the music, when's he coming out of the closet?!

JK, just finished the book. Didn't care for all the girls/ gay innuendo ..... Loved the business side of things. I would like to have your final say in the matter of who should be more credited for creating the idol format.......Simon F or Simon C? My instinct is mr C.......but will leave it to you to once an for all settle this....

Cowell told me about the format, asked my permission to borrow the phone vote idea and, at my suggestion, took it to Fuller (who I met years earlier through Hugh Goldsmith with whom I am lunching today).

When I've since discussed this with Fuller he tells me he had a similar format and suggested to Cowell they combine the two. SC agreed.

I have lunch with SF in May.

After the first two or three chapters I thought the book was quite good, much better than I had feared. But after reading about half of it, I’m getting angry: There are lots of unnecessary minor / silly mistakes which add up to a completely false picture.

One example, the record deals around Pop Idol:
Bower says that BMG and Sony were partners at the beginning of 2002 (p 134). But the joint venture was created two years later.
The music rights to the Pop-Idol-winners weren’t licensed to Sony in the US and to Universal in the rest of the world (p 147f). BMG (& after the merger Sony BMG) had the music rights for the world (and all territories beyond).

If Bower got this wrong what about the really important stuff, like the order of Cowell’s breakfast (p 153)?

DJones wrote:
After the first two or three chapters I thought the book was quite good, much better than I had feared. But after reading about half of it, I’m getting angry: There are lots of unnecessary minor / silly mistakes which add up to a completely false picture.

One example, the record deals around Pop Idol:
Bower says that BMG and Sony were partners at the beginning of 2002 (p 134). But the joint venture was created two years later.
The music rights to the Pop-Idol-winners weren’t licensed to Sony in the US and to Universal in the rest of the world (p 147f). BMG (& after the merger Sony BMG) had the music rights for the world (and all territories beyond).

If Bower got this wrong what about the really important stuff, like the order of Cowell’s breakfast (p 153)?

I'm only about 100 pages in, and not enjoying it very much. Too much not right, as you say. A much better book is Ex-Jive MD Steve Jenkins book.

Bower is so obsessed with gossip about Cowell’s private life (he has announced a fellow-up book with more of the same), he fails completely when it comes to the meat of the story: the business of TV & music. Apart from the self-serving hype of the interested parties, Bower has not much to say about the deals between Cowell & Freemantle/BMG and later Sony Music.

To describe Cowell - a small (ok, mid-sized) cog in a big wheel- as a “media mogul” (title of chapter 13) - “Cowell was relieved. Aged fifty-one, he had asserted his primacy as a television mogul, a worthy successor to Aaron Spelling” (p 288) - is laughable.

Even Bower realizes this eventually. Just 26 pages later he has this to say about his subject:
“On reflection, Cowell recognized his weakness in America. Without a hinterland, influential allies or top-gun American executives, he could only bow to two fearful and superstitious corporate employees who were proposing a ridiculous solution. Quite simply (…) he lacked any firepower to push through the obvious solution”.

Buying this book is a waste of money. The Sun - free on the internet - has the best bits serialized.

You should have got in with an IT / Telecoms company to create a televoting software system, which you could then have licensed to all the TV shows that went on to adopt the format - you'd have made millions I'm sure.

Isn't hindsight such a wonderful (or awful) thing, depending on how you look at it!