Season's greetings, stardust-hounds. Who wants another one of those desperately called-for reviews of the decade? Exactly. Which is why we're doing Cowell again.
By now, you will have realised that a story containing the words "Simon Cowell" and "global expansion" is like the bat signal to Lost in Showbiz, and there will be those among you who judge the call best ignored.
But how, in all conscience, can it be ignored? How, when his armies of darkness are on the march, co-opting teenage power balladeers to work for scale or nothing in exchange for lucrative prime-time exposure – a nakedly exploitative business model that has somehow yet to attract the attentions of the UN Commissioner for Karaoke Rights?
While you are considering your answer, let us proceed to the latest issue of GQ, which carries an interview with Cowell and his new business partner Philip Green – the least troubling double act since Ernst Stavro Blofeld invited a white persian cat on to his lap.
Simon and Philip's SPECTRE is as yet unnamed, though the gossamer-touched Sir Phil likes "Growl". But as you might have heard, the company will apparently seek to control the rights to all Cowell's existing shows, develop all new global formats he dreams up, and monetise said properties via a blitzkrieg of rapacious merchandising deals that will make the likes of Coca-Cola and Manchester United look like babes in the wood. The aim, it seems, is to make Cowell "richer than Oprah", and, rather naively, some have already called it "the new Disney".
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