After a weekend of hunting bloggers and threatening to take anyone to court who even mentions the words ‘fix’, Simon Cowell and his publicity machine were back in full swing this morning with claims that the music svengali sacked Cheryl “to protect her”.
Cowell broke his media silence to speak out after FOX’s announcement that Nicole Sherzinger’s would be on the judging panel following the weekend’s shenanigans.
“The hardest thing to accept is that everyone has painted me as a monster because I embarrassed her, but the truth was I was protecting her,” Cowell told The Mirror. “I just want people to be in the best place at the right time.”
“Knowing Cheryl like I know her, we noticed she was quieter than normal, looked a bit uncomfortable but I put some of this down to nerves,” added Cowell. “The overall feeling was that she was slightly out [of] her comfort zone in America, compared to what she was in the UK.”
“If she had accepted my original offer, she would have made a sensational return and would have understood she was more comfortable in the UK than the US.”
It is believed that Cowell offered Cole her job back over the weekend, but that the former Girls Aloud singer rejected said offer when the proposal was leaked. She still pocket FOX’s cash though, a payment believed to be in the region of $1.2m.
“When she turned down the UK show, we got back in touch and said, well she is still under contract with the US show so we invited her back. Her position was still there,” he explained.
“We had some heated conversations with her US manager will.i.am and he inferred this wasn’t a genuine offer. They thought that if she didn’t turn up on Wednesday then we wouldn’t pay her.
“We made it clear that she was always going to be paid in full. We got to the point on Saturday when we genuinely thought she was going to accept the offer but again neither she nor they returned any calls. So we’ve announced Nicole.”
