Simon Cowell: if he wanted to skip the Britain's Got Talent auditions, you couldn't blame him
Imagine if Amanda Holden said she was leaving Britain's Got Talent – chances are you'd hardly notice. The same thing goes for Piers Morgan. Or any of the endless identical street dance troupes – although perhaps in that case you'd indulge in a brief celebratory jig. But Simon Cowell leaving? That's different. That's borderline unthinkable.
And yet it is a possibility. Earlier this week Cowell said that he was planning to ditch the auditions and simply swan into Britain's Got Talent at the semi-final stage next year, with an eye to eventually leaving altogether.
But were Cowell to decide to skip the auditions process, you can understand why. He might get paid insultingly large sums of money, but it can't be much fun to spend your days sitting in a tatty theatre with an endless parade of godawful plate-spinners and dancing dogs in front of you, a crowd of screaming morons behind you and Piers Morgan to your right. If you were Simon Cowell, you'd be trying to escape as well.
Thankfully, Cowell's spokesman Max Clifford has subsequently denied that the judge had come to a definite decision on his involvement in auditions. And yes, I do mean thankfully – because Cowell's departure couldn't possibly be a good thing for the show. This is a slightly nightmarish thing to say, but we need Simon Cowell to be on BGT as much as possible.
True, America's Got Talent functions perfectly well without him. But that's largely because for many years his proxy was David Hasselhoff, and when you've got a bright orange recovering alcoholic with a desperate paucity of self-awareness who'd often finish a series by clambering on stage and honking out a song that pushes the very limits of ironic appreciation, you don't need Cowell. Britain's Got Talent is different.
If Cowell leaves Britain Got Talent, even for the initial stages of each series, then who's going to pick up the slack? Amanda Holden? Hardly – from the sheer number of times that she mentions him in interviews, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Holden can only operate as a human being if she starts every third sentence with "Simon thinks..." Remove Cowell from the equation and you'd strip the purpose from her life. She'd become spiritually untethered, spending her time on the show wandering around aimlessly and babbling nonsense into the sky. Could Piers Morgan pick up the slack? No. Just no.
Simon Cowell is simply too fused to Britain's Got Talent to leave it. He's the central figure of authority, the ultimate kingmaker. Go back and rewatch Susan Boyle's audition. When do you start to realise that she's got potential? The moment that Simon Cowell pulls a face like a lovestruck Japanese cartoon character at her. He gives us his approval to like her, so we do.
This country is full of would-be Simon Cowells; snippy experts with bad dress sense and an encyclopaedia of well-rehearsed put-downs. But could any of them really shoulder a show like Britain's Got Talent? Probably not. Can anyone else on the planet roll their eyes at the sight of a middle-aged woman in hotpants with as much barely-concealed intolerance as Simon Cowell? Again, probably not. Simon Cowell cannot leave Britain's Got Talent. If he goes, there'll be nobody to make the children cry. And, admit it, that's the best bit.
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