Simon Cowell broke down in tears as he revealed how his son Eric saved him from a “downward spiral”.
The music mogul shared how becoming a father changed his life for the better during a candid new interview with Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast.
The 64-year-old admitted he felt like he “had nothing to live for” before his longterm partner Lauren Silverman gave birth to their son Eric in 2014.
Simon confessed: “Before him I had reached the point where nothing mattered. It all hit me so hard. Being on TV I felt like a clown because I was dying inside. I put on loads of weight.
“If I was going to be hit by a bus the next day – I wasn’t worried about anything like that. The whole time was dark. It was the lowest level. I can relate when people say that being alive doesn’t matter anymore.
“I thought ‘what have I got to live for’. I didn’t want to take my own life but I thought ‘if something terrible happens to me it wouldn’t bother me’. I do still suffer with depression sometimes.”
The X Factor boss explained how he struggled to cope after the deaths of his beloved parents Julie and Eric.
“After losing them all the material things I had meant nothing,” he admitted.
“I was on a downward spiral. I was desperately unhappy so I thought I would just become a vampire and I would work till 7am.
“I got addicted to that lifestyle. I had to find something to fill the loss and I became a workaholic. I was very successful but so unhappy.”
Recalling the moment he found out Lauren was pregnant, he said: “I got the call from Lauren and she said ‘are you sitting down’. That’s how you know it’s something big!
“And it changed everything. It made me happy again, it was perfect.”
Simon was celebrating Irish band Westlife’s first number one single in 1999 when he learned his father, Eric, had suffered a fatal heart attack.
His mother, Julie, died 16 years later in 2015 following a long battle with dementia.
Speaking about the death of his dad, Simon said: “I was in Germany promoting Westlife and they were doing so well and I called home to tell them the good news and I could just tell something wasn’t right and then my mum told me.
“At that point in my life I thought my parents would live forever. It was tough. The hardest thing about losing your parents is you can’t think about them afterwards because it’s too difficult.”
“But then a bit later down the line you can and I do talk to my parents in my mind. I still believe they are with me. I would have swapped everything in my life that I had succeeded at to have him back in my life. So much I do now I still think ‘what would dad say about that’.
“He would have loved to have seen me on TV. Losing both my parents was without a doubt the hardest thing that has ever happened to me.”
While Simon’s dad never got to meet his son, who was named after him, his mother got to meet her beloved grandson.
Becoming overcome with emotion, Simon said: “I’m so glad she got to see Eric, she really wanted me to have a kid and she brought him this brown blanket and he still has it.
“And everything is about the blanket he always needs to know where it is. One day he was holding it and he said ‘I’m thinking about grandma and grandpa’ and then I started to believe they are still with us.
“It’s not a total loss. They were my best friends. It’s how I feel for Eric it is just pure love.”
