All posts tagged: Simon

Simon Cowell reveals BGT contestant who ‘did more good for the show than any other’ despite horrible treatment

Simon Cowell reveals BGT contestant who ‘did more good for the show than any other’ despite horrible treatment

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Simon Cowell may have mocked Susan Boyle before her now-famous Britain’s Got Talent audition, but 17 years on, he’s now thanking her for the show’s ongoing success. The talent show judge, 66, spoke about Scottish singer Boyle in a new interview, saying that she’s done “more good for our show than probably any other contestant”. Boyle, 65, auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent in 2009, but was initially sniggered at by judges Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan after saying that she hoped to be as successful as Elaine Paige. In what is now arguably the most memorable BGT moment, Boyle blew them away with a moving rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from the 1980 musical Les Misérables. While she ultimately lost out on winning BGT to dance group Diversity in the final, Boyle went on to sell over 10 million …

Travel journalist Simon Calder leaving Independent to join Telegraph

Travel journalist Simon Calder leaving Independent to join Telegraph

Published by Sam Flores

Artwork for Simon Calder’s new Telegraph podcast Travel journalist Simon Calder is leaving The Independent after 32 years to join The Telegraph. Calder will become travel correspondent at The Telegraph hosting new weekly podcast The Travel Expert, producing videos for social media, and leading The Telegraph’s travel newsletter which already has almost 200,000 subscribers. He will start the new role on 1 June and the podcast promises “a combination of consumer travel advice, inspirational travel destinations, expert interviews and a discussion of world travel news”. Calder has been The Independent‘s travel correspondent since 1994 and is well known for his regular appearances explaining travel stories on TV and radio. Calder won the travel journalism prize at Press Gazette’s British Journalism Awards in 2022, with the judges praising him for being a “fantastic consumer champion”. He was also named the top travel journalist in the UK by other travel journalists in a Press Gazette survey back in 2010. Telegraph head of travel Ben Ross said: “It’s brilliant news that Simon has agreed to join Telegraph Travel …

Jeremy Clarkson’s choir makes it to Britain’s Got Talent final – to the annoyance of Simon Cowell

Jeremy Clarkson’s choir makes it to Britain’s Got Talent final – to the annoyance of Simon Cowell

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter He’s got a farm, a pub, several presenting gigs – and now Jeremy Clarkson can add a Britain’s Got Talent final-making choir to his CV. The Hawkstone Farmers’ Choir, which was founded by Clarkson, made it through to the final of BGT on Saturday night after performing a rendition of Bastille’s “Pompeii”. Clarkson initially established the choir as part of an advertising campaign for his brewing firm, bringing 34 British farmers from across the country together to sing. However, the group have since used their platform to raise awareness for mental health issues in the farming community. Following the group’s live performance during the semi-final on Saturday (23 May), Simon Cowell praised the choir before admitting he’s not looking forward to seeing pal Clarkson’s “smug face”. The Hawkstone Farmers’ Choir performing on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ on Saturday (ITV) “You’re not a …

Simon Cowell’s ‘wakeup call’ after ‘disgusting’ treatment of Susan Boyle

Simon Cowell’s ‘wakeup call’ after ‘disgusting’ treatment of Susan Boyle

Published by Daniella Wilson

Former Britain’s Got Talent judge Simon Cowell reflected on his treatment of contestants while sitting behind the desk on the ITV talent show and revealed he regretted how he behaved towards budding singer Susan Boyle.  The 66-year-old music mogul first met Susan, 65, in April 2009, when she arrived at the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow to audition for the third series of the programme with a rendition of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from the musical Les Misérables. Her surprising performance resulted in a standing ovation and a jaw-dropping reaction from the sceptical panel, which consisted of Simon and his co-stars at the time, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan. The celebrity critics misjudged the West Lothian native based on her appearance when she stepped onto the stage, and almost two decades later, Simon seemed to regret his behaviour on that fateful day.  Susan went on to win second place at the series’s finale, losing out to dance troop Diversity, and earned herself an illustrious career as a professional singer that is still flourishing today.  During an interview on …

Simon Cowell admits he was ‘horrible’ to Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent: ‘It was a wakeup call’

Simon Cowell admits he was ‘horrible’ to Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent: ‘It was a wakeup call’

Published by Sam Flores

Susan Boyle’s jaw-dropping audition on Britain’s Got Talent is one of the talent show’s most memorable moments – however, creator and judge Simon Cowell has admitted that it was a “wakeup call” for him on how he treated contestants. Scottish church volunteer Boyle, now 65, auditioned on the ITV show back in 2009, initially being sniggered at by judges Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan after telling them that she hoped to be as successful as Elaine Paige. However, she immediately blew them away with her stunning rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from musical Les Misérables. Speaking about the audition 17 years on, Cowell said that his reaction to Boyle walking on stage was “awful”. Susan Boyle in her first audition for Britain’s Got Talent in 2009 (ITV) “But actually, I remember saying, I don’t think we look bad enough. I think we were even worse than that,” he told the podcast, Tales from the Celebrity Trenches on Wednesday (6 May). “I said, ‘we’re going to just tell it as it is.’ And they …

House of the Dragon star Simon Russell Beale to leave Shakespeare run

House of the Dragon star Simon Russell Beale to leave Shakespeare run

Published by Daniella Wilson

Sir Simon Russell Beale has revealed that colon cancer forced him to drop out of a production of Titus Andronicus. The actor, who plays Ser Simon Strong in the Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon, withdrew from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production two weeks before its run at the Hampstead Theatre in London back in September. It was revealed at the time that Beale – who had played the title role during the play’s run at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from April to June 2025 – was ending his stint as the character due to “ill health”, but no further reason was given. However, Beale has now revealed that he was rushed off to hospital after finishing work on House of the Dragon and was diagnosed with colon cancer soon after. During an event at The Delaunay restaurant in London this week, the actor explained (via The Times): “I’ve decided to tell everybody. It’s a really good production for those of you who didn’t see it, it’s a fantastic production, it really …

Professor Simon Conway Morris receives 2026 Templeton Prize

Professor Simon Conway Morris receives 2026 Templeton Prize

Published by Sam Flores

Conway Morris joins past laureates Freeman Dyson, the Dalai Lama, and Jane Goodall to receive one of the world’s largest individual lifetime achievement awards Professor Simon Conway Morris, a groundbreaking paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the 2026 Templeton Prize for his outstanding contributions to the field of evolutionary biology and his enduring efforts to explore the broader human implications of his scientific discoveries. Professor Conway Morris is internationally recognized for his pioneering research on the Cambrian explosion and his meticulous analysis of the Burgess Shale fauna. These studies have significantly reshaped our understanding of the early evolution of animal body plans and the dynamics of evolutionary innovation. Conway Morris’s most distinctive contribution is the articulation and empirical substantiation of evolutionary convergence—the recurrence of similar biological forms and behaviors across vastly different evolutionary lineages. Vision and many other sensory organs, as well as wings, fins, and other forms of locomotion have all evolved numerous times, independently, in different periods of Earth’s history. To Conway Morris, these are not just curious coincidences, but …

BBC Proms 2026 reveals ‘American’ line-up with tributes to Paul Simon and Marvin Gaye

BBC Proms 2026 reveals ‘American’ line-up with tributes to Paul Simon and Marvin Gaye

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This The line-up of this year’s BBC Proms will feature a season-long celebration of American music to mark 250 years since the signing of the US Declaration of Independence. It will include the Proms debut of The Met Orchestra and the highly-anticipated return of the Los Angeles Philharmonic after nearly 25 years, while it will premiere new work from American composers Wynton Marsalis and Jessie Montgomery. The world’s biggest classical music festival will also see debut performances by the Spanish National Orchestra and the Mahler Academy Orchestra from Italy, along with the return of the Berlin, Munich and Oslo philharmonic orchestras. Audiences can also expect appearances from conductors and star soloists including Marin Alsop, Angel Blue and Joyce DiDonato, as well as internationally-renowned pianists Martha Argerich, Kirill Gerstein, Yunchan Lim and Yuja Wang. A performance at the BBC Proms (Mark Allan/BBC) (PA Media) Although …

Finding Gertrud Kauders | Simon During

Finding Gertrud Kauders | Simon During

Published by José Betancourt

In the last years of his life my father wrote a memoir. Born in 1916 in Munich to Bohemian parents—his father Jewish, his mother not—he had spent his boyhood at a Bavarian boarding school, until the Nazis made it impossible for him to stay on in Germany. At that point he fled to Czechoslovakia, then to England and finally to New Zealand, where I was born and raised. For reasons I don’t quite understand, I didn’t immediately look at the fifty or so typescript pages he produced for family consumption only. But, in 2019, after my partner and I had bought an apartment in Berlin and I’d applied for German citizenship, I fished out his reminiscences and read them, newly curious about the life into which he had been born. The memoirs were more engaging than I’d expected. Though he had been dead for fifteen years, my father’s bleak, anachronistic worldview—a mix of old haute European class consciousness, bitterness, and civic-mindedness—became vivid again. One section left an especially strong impression on me. He devoted several …

Simon Cowell’s ex-Sinitta makes rare comment on ‘unfaithful’ music mogul’s fiancée Lauren Silverman and son Eric

Simon Cowell’s ex-Sinitta makes rare comment on ‘unfaithful’ music mogul’s fiancée Lauren Silverman and son Eric

Published by Sam Flores

Simon Cowell’s former girlfriend and TV star Sinitta made a rare comment about the music mogul, whom she said she dated for  “off-and-on” for 40 years. Talking to her fellow campmates in the I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, jungle, the singer and actress said that the X-factor creator was unfaithful to her throughout their decades-long relationship and brought up his current fiancée, Lauren Silverman and their son Eric. In the conversation, which was with TOWIE star Gemma Collins, Sinitta said: “He wasn’t a faithful boyfriend. He wouldn’t mind me saying it because he knows, and I was very possessive, but he kind of likes that. ‘Women act crazy about Simon, especially in American Idol. I’ve been burned on the shoulder with a cigarette when we were dancing in the club because some woman, gorgeous, model sort of thing, was trying to get to him. I feel like Simon loves me and cares about me, but it’s just, I think I romanticise everything.” Simon and Sinitta had a 40-year ‘off and on’ relationship (ITV) Talking …