The one woman Simon Cowell always loved: Theirs was an uncanny bond. So how will he cope without the showgirl mother (with a VERY colourful past) whose relentless ambition drove him on?

By Alison Boshoff for the Daily Mail

Published: 18:57 EST, 6 July 2015 | Updated: 07:04 EST, 7 July 2015

She was, as anyone who knows him will attest, the one woman who never had to doubt Simon Cowell’s devotion. Indeed, one of Julie Cowell’s jokes about her son was that she once asked him to buy her a new duvet for Christmas — and he insisted on getting her a car instead.

Similarly, there was to be no quiet family affair to mark her 80th birthday: Simon splashed out £250,000 on a huge surprise party at the Savoy, where Julie was serenaded by performers from the Rat Pack musical.

‘You can’t think of a better son. He was very good to her, very generous,’ says his biographer Tom Bower. 

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Loyal: Simon Cowell and his mother Julie, who died aged 89 on Sunday. It was through Julie that Simon inherited his love of the spotlight and his punishing work ethic

‘She loved going into Simon’s dressing room at the X Factor finals, seeing him there and being a part of it. And he loved to have her there. Simon was devoted to her, and she was very much part of his life and success.’

Last Christmas, Simon and his partner Lauren Silverman flew back from their holiday in Barbados for two days so they could spend Christmas Day with Julie, who was in hospital after suffering a stroke. ‘She couldn’t travel and he wasn’t willing to have a Christmas without her,’ Bower told me.

In recent months, Lauren was an almost daily visitor to the Wellington hospital in St John’s Wood, London, where Julie was being cared for.

‘Lauren went and sat with her. She has been terrific. Simon went as often as he could. On Saturday he went to see her and felt that he was saying goodbye. He just had that sense. She died on Sunday.’

Family holiday: Julie on the beach with Simon (left) and his brother Nicholas

Her death this week, at the age of 89, will come as an enormous loss. For it was through Julie that Simon inherited his love of the spotlight, his punishing work ethic and, perhaps most surprisingly, his trait of utter politeness in all personal dealings.

For even though he gained global fame through his ‘Mr Nasty’ persona, he can’t bear shouting or swearing — just like his mother. Indeed, the only one of Simon’s girlfriends Julie really didn’t like was make-up artist Mezghan Hussainy — because she couldn’t accept the fiery way Hussainy argued with her son. ‘It made my stomach churn,’ she once said.

The story of Julie Dalglish, the woman who shaped Simon Cowell, is a remarkable one. Born in November 1925 to Robert, a garage mechanic from Birmingham, and Winifred, Julie started dancing at the age of four. Her drive towards the bright lights and greasepaint was unstoppable, and by the age of 12 she had been cast as a dancer in a West End production and moved to digs in London.

During the war she was in a touring dance troupe, and afterwards was the lead dancer with a show put on by band leader Joe Loss at the Pigalle dinner and dance club in Piccadilly.

She fell in love with a tap-dancer, Bertram Scrase, who was something of a rogue. He already had a wife and baby daughter when he and Julie began their affair — and continued his philandering even after Julie gave birth to their son Michael.

Simon Cowell goes on holiday with beloved mum Julie in 2005

Family portrait: Julie with husband Eric and son Tony, Nicholas and Simon (far right)

Julie’s parents raised Michael while she continued working. Julie and Scrase went on to have a second son, Tony, in 1950, even though Scrase was by then embroiled in an affair with a waitress, moving to Bognor Regis in Sussex with her. Julie didn’t receive a penny in support.

Julie would spend weekends with her children, then return to London by train to perform at the Pigalle club under the stage name of Julie Brett.

It was on one of these train journeys that she met Eric Cowell, himself a father of two and on his second unhappy marriage.

She told an interviewer: ‘Every week I used to travel to see my parents. Usually I’d go with my friend and we’d chat all the way. This man would sit near us, and I used to say to her: “I’m sure he listens to our conversation.” But I thought he looked nice.

‘For two years we did that journey and never spoke. Then one day my friend wasn’t there and he asked me if I’d like a drink. I said: “I will, actually. It’s my birthday today.” And that was it.’

Soon they moved into a flat in Richmond, South-west London, and Eric suggested they have more children. ‘I thought we had four between us and that was enough, but Eric delivered an ultimatum,’ she said.

Their first boy, Stephen, was born in Brighton in 1958. Complications arose in the later stages of the pregnancy and Julie had an emergency Caesarean. The boy died soon after birth. Julie’s grief was enduring.

Two miscarriages followed before the birth of Simon, in South London, in October 1959, followed in March 1961 by Nicholas.

In September that year Eric was finally divorced from his second wife, Jeanette Sevier, on the grounds of his adultery with Julie. A month later, Julie and Eric were married, with a reception at the Savoy hotel in London.

By then, Eric was working at an estate agency and he and Julie created a happy family home in Elstree for their boys — including Michael and Tony from Julie’s liaison with Scrase. Julie gave up her stage career to be the star of the family instead.

Simon Cowell on son, the end of American Idol, & L.A. Reid

Sad news: Simon Cowell's mother Julie passed away on Sunday at the age of 89

‘Eric wanted me to stop, and by then I wanted to as well. I had a happy home life for the first time, and I wanted to be a full-time mother. It was a wonderful, happy environment,’ she said in a 2007 interview.

Her roast potatoes (she would parboil them thoroughly, then score the backs with a fork) were legendary, as was her immaculate appearance.

The phrase she uttered most as a mother was ‘manners maketh man’ — although it took Simon a while to learn the lesson. The time when the four-year-old remarked that his mother looked ‘like a poodle’ in a new hat was a standing family joke.

As Eric became wealthier and more successful, Julie concentrated on building a gilded lifestyle for them all. But showbusiness was not missing from her life for long.

When Eric became an executive for EMI — and with one of their neighbours being a boss at Warner Bros —Julie was soon hobnobbing with stars such as Bette Davis, Trevor Howard and Robert Mitchum.

Both of Simon’s parents were extrovert and fun-loving, with Eric taking a box at Ascot much as Simon does now. They had several foreign holidays a year, a large house, and the boys went to private schools.

In the holidays, however, Julie insisted that the teenagers take on jobs to learn the value of money.

‘Of course, they didn’t need to work, but I felt it was so important they get out there and learn that money doesn’t grow on trees,’ she said.

Despite their close relationship, there was plenty of conflict with Simon, who, Julie admitted, was ‘a complete handful’. Once he shaved off his younger brother’s hair. She said she used to hit Simon as punishment, but he didn’t seem to care. Simon added: ‘It was a mental battle with a strong woman. Always fractious.’

‘I was certainly stricter than Eric,’ said Julie. ‘I used to do that “wait till your father gets home” thing. But I discovered years later that Eric never disciplined the boys at all. He would pretend he had given them hell, but actually he’d just said: “Tell your mother I’ve had a real go at you about this.” ’

Tom Bower says: ‘Simon’s father was the person who tolerated him being dilatory about finding a path in life, but Julie used to be very angry about it. He has unbelievable drive and that comes from her. She had a lot of ambition for him but also impatience, and she drove him to transform himself from someone who had no idea about what they wanted to do into a great success.’

Close-knit: Simon and Julie (centre) pictured at her 70th birthday with her children and late husband Eric (right)

A loving grandma: Simon was thrilled last year when he was able to introduce his son Eric to his mum Julie, as he reportedly flew from the US to the UK just so she could meet the tot 

A crisis arose when Julie was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995. She had surgery, then six weeks of radiotherapy, insisting that her sons shouldn’t accompany her to the hospital.

‘I had to do it alone,’ she said. ‘My boys would come and see me, and mostly I could say hand on heart that I was fine. But I didn’t want to risk them seeing me at a low moment because it would have worried them. As a mother, your first role is to protect your children.’

She added: ‘On the day I got the all-clear, Simon sent me a bunch of flowers so big I couldn’t get them through the door.’

A few short years later, in 1999, just as Cowell was finding success in the music business as producer of the boy band Westlife, Eric died of a massive heart attack.

It speaks volumes about Julie’s love for Simon that she couldn’t bring herself to tell him he had died.

She said: ‘It was the most awful thing. He came on the phone so thrilled, saying: “Guess what?” Westlife were No 1. It was his big break and he was over the moon.

‘I couldn’t speak. I told him I was breathless because I’d run up the stairs. I made out that I couldn’t hear him properly. He was all cock-a-hoop, and I let him go without telling him his father was dead.’ It was left to his brother Nicholas to break the news.

In the aftermath of Eric’s death, Simon and Nicholas drew ever closer to their mother. Both sons would call her every day, and she would accompany Simon and a group of his girlfriends and ex-girlfriends on an annual Christmas trip to Barbados. (Julie was as bemused as everyone else about how he managed to stay friendly with them all.)

What a surprise: In 2007, Simon appeared on the revived version of This Is Your Life alongside mother Julie and brother Tony

Although Julie declared herself delighted when Simon became engaged to Mezghan Hussainy in 2010, she was apparently relieved when the romance didn’t lead to wedlock. ‘Sometimes these girls want to be there too much,’ she said, having observed their fractious relationship at first hand. ‘Marriage is a very big step.’

Julie had met Lauren Silverman several times in Barbados before she became pregnant in 2013.

She was thrilled by the birth of her youngest grandchild, Eric, named after her late husband, whom she met only a few weeks before she had her stroke.

Simon went directly to see her on a visit to the UK a few weeks after the birth, saying: ‘She never thought that at my age I’d be turning up at her home in Brighton with a grandson called Eric.

‘Even though Lauren had never met my dad, she knew my relationship with him was very strong and she felt quite passionately that he should be named after my dad. We told my mum before anyone else.’

The Cowell family yesterday released a statement saying: ‘Today our beloved mum Julie passed away. Anyone who had met her would know what a truly special and kind lady she was. We are heartbroken and will miss her terribly, but she is now at peace.’

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