Simon Cowell has revealed he once spent £3,000,000 on ‘burlesque dancing vaginas.’
To launch his podcast, Tales from the Celebrity Trenches, Holy Moly founder Jamie East invited the music mogul on his very first episode and didn’t hesitate to excavate those trenches.
East asked the Britain’s Got Talent judge if he spent £3M on a birthday party featuring ‘burlesque dancing vaginas,’ to which he replied: ‘Absolutely correct. Those days are over, by the way.’
Now, dear reader, if you’re anything like me, this assertion left you with more questions than answers. Namely: What in the world could he possibly be talking about?
As a journalist, I consider myself, first and foremost, a public servant, and sometimes that means tarnishing my digital footprint so you don’t have to.
Which is how I found myself — at 8:30 am on this Tuesday morning — bravely typing the following question into a Google search bar on my company computer: ‘What is burlesque dancing vaginas?’
When the results provided more questions than answers, I decided to get more specific: ‘Is “burlesque dancing vaginas” people dancing while dressed up as vaginas or people dancing with their vaginas?’
I come to you now with a humble heart and empty hands. I have absolutely no idea what Cowell meant or why it could have cost £3 million.
The man who built empires out of televised humiliation, manufactured pop stars, and said ‘it’s a no from me’ with devastating efficiency, continued, saying on the podcast: ‘I didn’t know it was going to cost that much, I really didn’t.
‘I think I’m still paying for it now. I honestly couldn’t believe it.’
The party in question was reportedly thrown for his 50th birthday, back when Cowell was less ‘softened dad who rides e-bikes in Malibu’ and more ‘human embodiment of 2007 excess.’
This was peak X Factor-era Simon: ultra-bronzed and low-V-necked.
Sadly, Cowell admits the night itself is largely lost to history.
‘I wish I could remember it. I honestly can’t,’ he said. ‘I remember taking, I think, half a Xanax before that because I was so anxious.’
This only raises more questions: Why did dancing vaginas make Simon so nervous? Does he even know what he means, or is he just quoting the charge he later saw on his credit card?
East also cited reports that Cowell once checked into London’s ultra-luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park solely to take a bath because the one at home was broken.
Cost? Around £2,000.
Simon’s response was the verbal equivalent of looking into the middle distance and briefly seeing your younger self in Ibiza.
‘I might have done that,’ he admitted, almost wistfully. ‘Do you know, what I p***ed away so much money in hindsight. I do think about that, because my God, two grand on a bath?’
It’s almost touching hearing one of television’s most famously ruthless millionaires suddenly sound exactly like somebody discovering their Deliveroo history after three glasses of wine.
Cowell went on to reflect on how dramatically his attitude towards money has changed since becoming wildly wealthy through shows like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, alongside managing chart-dominating acts including One Direction.
‘I’m a bit more cautious now, I think because I didn’t have a lot of money to start with,’ he explained.
‘So when I started to make a lot of money, I’m like, “wow, this is fantastic”.
‘And now I’m like, “God, why did I spend all that money?” You know, all those lists, I’m not worth anywhere near that.’
Because beneath the yacht parties, Xanax-fuelled anxiety spirals and mysteriously expensive baths lies a lesson we can all connect to: sometimes you wake up, look at your bank account and realise maybe the dancing vaginas weren’t a necessity after all.
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