HE'S king of the crushing putdown, master of the withering look and a fan of high-waisted trousers...but Simon Cowell has still become a megastar in the US.
And when I spent a week on the West Coast with Pop Idol's Mr Nasty I saw at first hand the, er, ‘terrible' price he has to pay for making it big across the pond.
He must have thought he was California dreamin' when a feisty blonde marched up to him in the foyer of the Fox TV offices in LA...and stuck her hand straight down the front of those famous high-waisters!
"In England, we shake hands," he told her, just about managing to keep his cool. Later he told me: "Nothing surprises me or shocks me any more. LiterallyANYTHING can happen now.
"In America, you can look like Godzilla but if you're on TV you'll become attractive to women. People are obsessed with celebrity over here,much more so than in England."
That obsession can get out of hand and, like many famous names, Simon has been singled out by the stalkers.
He also has to cope with women who hit on him—any time, any place. Only in America, he says,could you be out having dinner with your girlfriend and end up singled out for some very dirty dancing by another woman.
"A girl recently came up to me in a restaurant in LA when my girlfriend Terri was sitting next to me," he said.
"This girl told me she needed to ask me something privately, so I moved to her table...and she started to do a striptease!
"She got as far as undoing her shirt, then a friend of mine came over and said, ‘Simon, I think you'd better come back to the table'.
Stunning
"Needless to say, Terri wasn't very amusedbut I thought it was hilarious."
It's clear American Idol has made Simon a very hot property in the US. He's in talks about his own chat show over there and is about to produce his first drama series, which he has co-written.
On top of that, his dating show, Cupid, has been sold to 10 countries and is being recommissioned for a second series. And his autobiography, I Don't Mean To Be Rude But..., is out in November.
He is reportedly the third-highest paid star on American TV and has amassed a huge fortune which showbiz insiders estimate could swell ro £100million within a few years.
His fame and fortune have made him irresistible, but Simon, 43, insists the women who proposition him are wasting their time. He's staying faithful to stunning Terri Seymour, a 30-year-old showbiz correspondent for the US TV show Extra.
But it can be tough. From LA, we followed Simon to San Francisco, where he judged the fifth round of the American Idol 3 auditions.
One wannabe Idol, Marisa Sobecki-Engle, 19, was clearly smitten. "I think Simon is kind of cute for an older guy," she gushed.
"I think he's got bags of style. And he's also got a young girlfriend, which means he must have some ‘mad skills'." But then she would say that. She got through the round largely on Simon's vote.
And anyway, according to Simon, it's the mums he has to really watch out for.
"When I was doing American Idol 1 & 2, I had more mothers hit on me than contestants. And I'm talking big time," he said.
"There were a lot of very, VERY bizarre suggestions and it wasn't about, ‘If I do this, will you put my daughter through?' They just came on to me. That's when I realised I was over 40, because it was only the mothers.
"They'd say, ‘I'm staying in this hotel. Blah blah blah.' I'd just say, ‘Thank you very much. You are adorable. Unfortunately, I'm dating someone'."
But Simon is only human and he admitted: "I was sorely tempted by one mum when we were filming American Idol 1. She was very cute. And it was pre-Terri!"
However, for every sexy come-on Simon gets at auditions, there's a confrontation, too. "When we were in Houston, some guy came in and, when I say I lost it, I was literally out of control with laughter," he reveals.
"He was so furious, he walked up to me and threw a glass of water in my face. But I couldn't help it. He was just hideous—absolutely horrendous."
In New York, during the first series of American Idol, Simon's straight talking almost got him beaten up.
"A couple of kids had auditioned and I'd told them they were useless. The next evening they came back with three of their friends and were waiting for me outside the hotel with baseball bats.
"They were absolutely going to beat the s**t out of me. Fortunately for me, I had changed my normal schedule and left the building at an earlier time."
He's also had to cope with the stalkers. He said: "There was some weird girl at one of the Emmy Award parties the other night,
Scary
"She came up to me and whispered, ‘Every time you're in the Saks 5th Avenue department store, I stalk you. And now I'm stalking you tonight'."
She was not the first to spook him.
"When I first came to LA, I rented a house on North Roxbury. One night, we were woken by a crash and a stalker had got into the garden. No question about it, someone got in.
"The very next day, we moved house. That's all you can do."
So the acid-tongued terror of the pop world can feel vulnerable. And he has a soft side, as I discovered as we left the hotel to catch a flight to London.
Despite the rush, Simon took a great deal of time to talk to a group of schoolchildren and sign autographs. When he eventually left, the teacher asked: "So, children, are we still scared of Simon?"
"Nooooo," they yelled back in unison.
They might not be, but there are hundreds of pop wannabes who still are...
