‘Tony, I need you to get them on the radio,’ Simon said. ‘I need to get who on the radio?’ I politely inquired. ‘Westlife, Westlife my new boy band. I couldn’t pretend to be excited, I’d heard he’d signed a band but another boy band? I needed to be convinced they had what it took (whatever it is that’s ‘it’!') ‘I understand Simon, that’s my job but I’ll need to hear them and then we can discuss it further.’ I replied as a fairly matter of fact retort. Seemed the most sensible way of preventing any further dialogue, as there wasn’t really one I thought, well not about the current topic anyway.
‘Well I Can’t tell you what I think I can do if I hadn’t heard it can I?’ ‘No, I just need you to get them on the radio, I need interviews and I need them on daytime. This is Loius Walsh and Ronan’s new boy band. They’re going to be huge.’ I paused, was I hearing him correctly? He was asking me to get a band no one had heard of or heard anything by, least of all me, on the radio to be interviewed! He had to be kidding. I’m sure this was him out to prove to Louis Walsh who had chosen to sign his band to Simon just what he could do. I uttered the same curiousity, ‘You are joking aren’t you?’
I was wasting my time. We were destined for a trip round the houses by way of anything resembling a conversation. Simon Cowell wanted me to call local radio stations, stations that rarely played anything that weren’t hits and set up a bunch of radio interviews with a boy band no one had ever heard of. He didn’t think it mattered that the radio promotion guy, never mind the radio station had been allowed to hear them.
It makes me laugh now but the look on Lee and the others who I had working for me was hilarious. I put the phone down and shouted across the room. ‘Are you ready for this? Simon Cowell wants us to get interviews for Westlife.’ Reverberating across the room came the reply’ Who the fuck are Westlife.’ Oh I wish I’d have said that to Simon! All for one and one for all we couldn’t believe what he was asking of us. I just shrugged my shoulders and said, trust me there isn’t a conversation we need to go and do it.
You couldn’t reason with Simon over something like this. Never mind Randy Jackson, enter THE dog with his bone, Westlife. Just to think, Boyzone, the only band ever through generations to be a serious threat to Val Doonican were heading for longer woolier jumpers and semi retirement and he (Simon Cowell) had a grip on his babies. And we were the babysitters. He was in diaper heaven. Herein began his stampede and complete domination of the pop charts. He had previously done an amazing job with Robson and Jerome, more of which I’ll recite later, had some continued success with 5ive but now he had the one that he thought would do it for him. Unlike Robson and Jerome who took a lot of persuading, kidnapping, harrasing all by his own admission as they were successful actors and already stars. Simon needed them to make a record , they couldn’t give a toss!
Writing about this all (and they’ll be other stories I’m sure!) makes me smile and makes me understand even more what was it that made Simon Cowell different from the rest. He doesn’t understand the word no! To make it even more hilarious is that we managed to get some interviews for Westlife although we needed Ronan Keating in there as well doing the interviews, that maybe swung it a little as he was ‘famous pretty’ instead of ‘who the fuck are you pretty.’ Hell, what I am saying. None of them are pretty to me. I’d like to think though that the radio stations were doing it for us and not for Westlife or for Simon Cowell. In those days people knew who we were when you called the radio stations and hadn’t a clue who Simon was. How funny is that, if he had tried to call people directly they probably wouldn’t have taken his call!
