Unbreakable: My New Autobiography (3 page)

As the screen opened and we walked out to the thundering roar of the audience, I reached across and grabbed Dannii’s hand, yanking it up into the air in a triumphant punch. Much later, in her autobiography, she writes about this moment as if it was something she welcomed, a peace offering that made her feel all warm and gooey inside, as if everything might turn out OK between us. Utter bilge, if you ask me. I could feel she was fighting with all her teensy weensy might to put her arm down and extricate herself from my grip, but as she only weighs about 3lb, I successfully managed to keep her arm up there, grinning maniacally and thinking, Fuck
you
, missus.

Dannii is stunning to look at, even prettier than Kylie, actually. Her skin is incredible and she has a perfectly proportioned figure, thanks to a little help on the top half. And of course, Simon fancied the pants off her. I get that. He’s single, he’s the boss and he can do what the fuck he wants.

But during filming it was obvious to me that there was some sort of relationship going on between them and, the more it progressed, the worse it became between her and me. It was unbelievably bad. She had now taken to walking past me in the hallway without even making eye contact. I’d like to say it didn’t bother me, but it did. A lot. After all, who wants to work in such an unpleasant atmosphere? The days were long and hard enough without the extra burden of spending hours sitting next to someone with a face like a smacked arse.

I had really enjoyed the previous three series, but this one was rapidly turning into an odious chore. I found it hard dealing with a sulker. So after a couple of weeks of this icy nonsense, I decided to instigate a meeting with her and executive producer Richard Holloway. I wanted to bury the hatchet. You can ignore an unpleasant frisson if it’s just for one day, but this was going on and on, doing my head in.

The meeting was held in an empty dressing room at Wembley, on a Friday when we were doing rehearsals with our acts for the next night’s live show. It was just the three of us and she perched on top of the counter along one wall, her legs dangling, her eyes staring straight ahead as if she was transfixed by something on the opposite side of the room. Anything but look at Richard and me who were sitting adjacent to her on a sofa. I cleared my throat and aimed my words at the side of her head.

‘Look, I apologise if I have offended you. This isn’t pleasant for either of us; I just want to clear things up so we can get a more harmonious atmosphere.’

Nothing. Her gaze didn’t shift from the far wall, so I carried on.

‘What is it you want from me so we can get this to a professional level and get it to work? Shall I walk over hot coals? Eat broken glass?’

Again, nothing. Not. One. Fucking. Word.

Richard started talking to her in a low voice and she mumbled back at him, then he declared that as we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere we might as well draw the meeting to a close. And that was it. My attempt at making peace had fallen on deaf ears and we were back to cold shoulders and frosty silences. It was all far too school playground for me.

Thank God I had asked Richard to be there, because if you repeat these things, people might say you’re exaggerating, that she must have said
something
. But no, she said fuck all to me. Outwardly, she seemed all ‘Ooh, I
love
children, I
love
puppies’, but in my opinion she was dark, very dark. What you saw was most definitely not what you got.

And so the show went on, and on, and bloody on, for what, given the unpleasantness, seemed like an age to me. The closer she got to Simon, the more I felt that she started telling the producers what to do. Suddenly, from being the supposedly nervous new girl, she was saying, ‘This isn’t right,’ and, ‘Simon doesn’t like it this way.’

Every time I heard her do it, I had to embed my teeth in the end of my tongue to stop myself making a caustic remark. I’m surprised there’s not a dent in it to this day. Meanwhile, the antics behind the screen had gone up a gear, with her sticking her tongue in Simon’s ear and giggling like a bloody teenager whilst Louis and me stood there like a couple of gooseberries.

Then again, Simon was single and so was she. They could do what they wanted. But, for me, it made her
so
unbearable to work with that I just couldn’t take it. It was horrible. My stomach was constantly knotted with anxiety about it and as each show loomed I would wake up and think, Oh God, I have to spend the day sitting alongside
her
again. It had become intolerable so I asked to have a meeting with Simon.

He was staying in a suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in central London and liked to hold any meetings there, so he slotted me in for later that day. It was towards the end of filming
The X Factor
live shows, so the final was imminent and this series was about to become just a bad memory. I was here to fight my corner for the next one. I walked in, gave him a kiss on each cheek and launched straight in.

‘I can’t take it any more. It’s her or me.’

His expression remained impassive. Simon is used to dealing with various ongoing spats between the women in his life and clearly takes it all in his stride.

‘I’m not going to make that choice, Sharon. I would like both of you to stay.’

Inwardly, my heart sank. This was not what I wanted to hear, so I acted like he hadn’t said it and persevered.

‘Look, if you did some audience research, I don’t think she’s even got a particularly strong fan base.’

‘What do you mean?’ He sounded weary.

‘She had a single out in the middle of the series, and it tanked.’

He stuck his bottom lip out, then shrugged.

‘It doesn’t matter. When I was on
American Idol
with Paula Abdul, she released a single that didn’t do very well either. But the audience still loved her.’

I could sense that the battle was lost, but I was a desperate woman so had one last try.

‘Dannii’s just a pretty face. You can get another pretty face.’

‘Sharon, I’m not doing it.’ His firm tone left me in no doubt that this wasn’t a matter for debate. ‘I don’t want you to go and I don’t want her to go either. So think about it.’

We were about to finish the series and then it was Christmas. Simon clearly thought that I would fly back to LA, spend some downtime with Ozzy and the kids, then calm down and change my mind about leaving the show.

In a way, he was right. Christmas came and went, and there was so much else going on, not least being a judge on the next series of
America’s Got Talent
.
The X Factor
wasn’t a topic of conversation at home; I think everyone in the family just presumed that I would go back. By the time March 2008 came around, the memory of all the angst had dulled slightly, so I
did
start negotiations for the next series, pencilling it into my schedule for that summer.

I’m first and foremost a businesswoman, so, knowing that I was quite in demand at the time, I decided to try and up my deal a bit. Men always get more money, that’s just the way it is, and I thought, Fuck it, I’m going to push, push, push. With stuff like that, it’s OK. I’m not asking Mrs Smith next door to bust her balls, I’m dealing with a corporation. The game is that you go in, ask for too much and know you’re not going to get it, then settle for something in the middle.

Negotiations started and we were going back and forth on the money, unable to agree. On top of that, about a month before the auditions were set to start, I felt the familiar churning sensation in my gut at the thought of going through all that old shit again. There I was, in my lovely home, enjoying a relatively peaceful life with my family, about to leave them for a manic schedule of different cities and hotels alongside someone I was uncomfortable with, someone who gave me a fucking great knot in my stomach. What was I doing? It wasn’t that I was afraid, more anxious. I started weighing up the pros and cons in my mind constantly, the only pro being the money. I went over it with Ozzy so many times that I think he stopped listening.

‘I don’t think I’m going to go back.’

‘Sharon, do what you’ve got to do, it’s your call. I just don’t want it making you ill.’

He had a point. I don’t handle that kind of stress at all well; it eats me up. It was just the thought of that toxic atmosphere again; of standing behind that screen just inches away from someone exuding utter disdain. I wasn’t building a career, I wasn’t promoting a record, I wasn’t hoping to get signed by a label. So why do it? It was like a spider’s web for me. There had been no humour, no fun moments, and I just didn’t want the pressure again.

Ultimately, the reason I didn’t do the next series was because I didn’t get the money I wanted, but the Dannii business was all mixed in there too. Afterwards, I spoke to Simon on the phone and he was really nice about it. I was still working for him on
America’s Got Talent
, so I knew that we were absolutely fine going forward. That’s one of the really good things about Simon: you can say your piece and he never holds it against you.

In fact, it was Louis and me who came up with the idea that he should replace me with Cheryl Cole. A decision that, ultimately, worked out really well for everyone.

When the publicity started for the next series with Cheryl Cole instead of me, word reached me back in LA that the stock line seemed to be that I had kicked up a stink because I felt threatened by the presence of another woman on the panel.

As I now work with four other women on a daily talk show in LA and get on famously with every single one of them, it’s quite clear to me that when people clash, it has absolutely nothing to do with gender and everything to do with their personality differences.

We get on really well now, but when I had a bit of a ding-dong with Piers Morgan during the second season of
America’s Got Talent
, no one suggested that it had anything to do with what sex we were. It was just a plain old clash of characters, that’s it. There I was, a successful businesswoman in my fifties, a mother, a wife, and already well established as a judge on the show, being made out to be jealous of a young, single woman who, as far as I am concerned, can’t sing for shit and couldn’t cut a business deal if she fucking tried. Give me a break.

When the book
Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life Of Simon Cowell
came out in April 2012, the author Tom Bower wrote that Simon had said the following about Dannii: ‘I had a crush on her. It was Dannii’s hair, the sexy clothes and the tits. I was like a schoolboy. She was foxy. She was a real man’s girl. Very feminine.’ Bower also wrote that Simon had told a friend, ‘There were a few bonks and then it petered out while I was in America.’

Publicly, Simon still hasn’t admitted to the affair, but Bower told the media that he had confirmed it to him privately. When I heard this, I felt like shouting from the rooftops, ‘
See
? I was right.’

I wouldn’t say I felt vindicated as such, because I didn’t feel guilty of anything in the first place, but it proved I hadn’t been making it up when I said she had an uppity attitude as she was fucking the boss. To my mind, she must have felt it was a case of ‘Don’t fuck with me, because I’ll tell him’. She clearly felt that shagging Simon gave her a vicarious power and it was so immature, not to mention deeply bloody irritating to deal with. Now that she’s in her forties and has a young child, she’s probably a very different person. The trouble is, when you get by on your looks, where do you go as you get older? But to be honest, other than having to remember what happened between us for the purposes of writing this book I just don’t think about her now. If I saw her at an event, I wouldn’t say anything. I probably wouldn’t even acknowledge her.

Now, as I enter my seventh decade, I find I
am
losing my temper less often, probably more to do with wilful self-improvement than any chemical shift prompted by age. I am really trying not to be confrontational, but at least if I am, I find that I can get it out there in a more measured way and then move on.

These days, if someone is doing something I think is annoying or wrong, or I just don’t agree with it, then I’ll say, look, whatever you’re doing is wrong and it’s annoying me, so would you please stop. Or words to that effect, give or take the odd cuss here and there. Then they will either deny it, tell me I’m imagining it, or admit it and say that now they know it bothers me they will stop forthwith. Then it’s done. No grudges. I’m not the sort of person who will hate you or never talk to you again. I’m just not that way. Besides, things change in a second and you might suddenly see a quality in that person that you’ve never seen before, something you didn’t notice when you first met them. So you can’t use a first meeting as a barometer, I know that now. I have definitely become less kneejerk in my reactions to people and, I hope, more tolerant.

When it was announced that I was going to be a judge on the tenth series of
The X Factor
this year, naturally the press, ever keen to stir up a feud, asked Dannii for her thoughts on my return.

‘That’s risky. Either people will go, “We have moved on,” or go, “Amazing.” I won’t be watching, I haven’t watched any of the shows since I left,’ she replied.

Obviously, I took the job and I certainly wouldn’t have done so if
I
thought it was a risky decision for either me or the show, so I don’t agree with her. But you know what? The older, wiser, mellower me feels that nobody agrees on absolutely everything and that she’s perfectly entitled to her opinion. It really doesn’t bother me.

Knock yourself out, Dannii love.

For me, this whole sorry episode in my life can be summed up by something Ozzy said at the time. Unless someone is a really well-established star, he hardly ever knows who they are, and sometimes I can tell him a story a hundred times and he forgets what I’ve said. I’m sure that, during the early audition stages, I had told him I was working with Dannii, before it all went horribly wrong. But knowing him, he probably hadn’t computed the information.