Cowell sheds tears over dad's death on TV

Simon Cowell has shown his softer side during a TV interview, as he shed tears while discussing the death of his father Eric. Speaking on Piers Morgan's Life Stories, the X Factor mogul described that period of his life as a "horrible, horrible time" that made things like hit records "just meaningless". Eric, who was an executive for EMI, suffered a fatal heart attack in 1999, on the same day that Cowell's band Westlife reached number one in the US with Swear It Again. However Cowell's mother Julie could not bring herself to tell him his father had died when he phoned with the news of the band's chart success. "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," he said, "and then the news of what had happened and I had to get back to England. "I went back and realised that your first responsibility is that you've got to look after your mum." Cowell also admitted on the show that the grief hit him so hard he can no longer go to funerals. "I find it very, very difficult to deal with that kind of reality," he said. "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." The full interview can be seen next Saturday at 9pm.

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.