Gareth Gates has dished on Simon Cowell.
Scooping second place on Pop Idol back in 2002, the singer lost out on first place to Will Young. He's got not a single bad word to say about the legendary TV judge, but has revealed something about the 64-year-old's beauty routine he might not have wanted public.
Simon's image has made the headlines over the last few years, with his ever-changing face documented with photographs. Now Gareth has revealed that Simon's appearance is a focal point in his dressing room, teasing a nifty trick used to boost the star's confidence.
"The first time I went into his office, I walked in and there was a mirror on the wall and it said: 'Yes Simon, you are the most beautiful in the land'," Gareth admitted on the My Dirty Laundry podcast. "I swear this is true. And I was like, 'Wait a minute, is that real?'.
"And he replied: 'Yes darling, it's real'. I have no idea if it was a joke gift or not but I can imagine him looking at himself in it every day." Revealing more about his former mentor, Gareth continued in his interview: "I owe a lot to Simon Cowell. You know, I was his sort of boy from the start in Pop Idol. And I was obviously with his label. We got on really, really well. We bump into each other, every now and again, but he's a great guy.
"You know, and the annoying thing is about Simon is that he's always right," he concluded. It comes after Cowell was dealt another blow in his hunt for the next One Direction. He's had a lukewarm reception at auditions for his new Netflix show The Midas Touch.
Alongside a surprisingly low uptake on social media, the show's profile boasts only 777 followers, a stark contrast from Simon's personal Instagram with 2.3 million. Cowell, behind talent powerhouses Britain's Got Talent and X Factor, can't seem to replicate his previous successes online despite a hefty marketing budget promoting his latest venture.
As of now, his efforts are falling flat as compared to the millions of followers on his other shows' social media. Adding insult to injury, Simon recently blasted social media's impact on the music industry while speaking with Jackie Brambles on Greatest Hits Radio.
He said songs uploaded online daily is leading to fewer recording contracts and global breakthroughs, saying: "The reality is that every day something like 200,000 songs are uploaded [to social media] so weirdly less people are getting signed, and less people are breaking worldwide. It's the worst I've ever known it since I've been in the music business. Without Eurovision Sam Ryder wouldn't have got signed there has to be a platform."
His pursuit of another successful boyband in Liverpool did not go as expected. TV executives expected hoards of people to arrive with the hope of making it big and becoming as successful as Boyzone, Westlife and Take That. But instead, they were faced with a reported handful of people in Liverpool.
An observer said: "They started arriving slowly from about 9am on Saturday but the biggest number in the queue never amounted to more than about 40. By early afternoon, the number arriving had virtually dried up and it was the same story on the Sunday audition."
The insider revealed to The Sun: "The amount of railings they put up suggested they were expecting hundreds or thousands of people to arrive and pack out the queues but they had a fraction of those kinds of numbers." More auditions are set for Dublin later this month, with London seeing three dates at the start of August.
Follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.