A talent spotter who loves the limelight Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell; By Tom Bower; Faber/Ballantine Books, £18.99, $28 In the spirit of the cut-throat business world in which he has become a very big fish indeed, here's a guide to getting money out of Simon Cowell. IN Business Books Invent an exotic beauty product. Cowell is so obsessed with his looks he would buy a pot of Sumatran rat droppings if he thought it would keep his 52-year-old skin taut and smooth. Or become a lap-dancer. Cowell loves them for "their looks, their uninhibited nudity, the fun, the convenience and the lack of commitment." Interior design is another sector to have benefited from Cowell's rise to global superstardom. The capricious talent-show mogul is constantly having work done to his London, Barbados and Beverly Hills homes. One boasts a pond with a hidden path giving him the illusion of walking on water. Wonder where that idea came from? The above details come from Tom Bower's biography. Bower is a veteran investigative journalist who specialises in the lives of larger-than-life tycoons such as Robert Maxwell and Mohamed Fayed. Cowell is the perfect subject for him: a celebrity-mogul driven by compulsive ambition and boundless eccentricities. Cowell's "journey" (in the lingo of The X Factor) began as a London music industry talent spotter in the 1980s. He wasn't good at it; indeed, he became a joke among colleagues. Sweet Revenge abounds with examples of his faulty judgment, as when he turned down the chance to sign Take That. One reason for the malfunctioning radar was indecision. Another was a lack of interest in pop: Cowell's listening habits are more in the line of Frank Sinatra. But he did have one key insight. "To me," he says to Bower, "the future of the music business is tied to TV, and TV in America has not been a platform to drive music like in Britain." Cowell, scouring tabloids and TV for inspiration, learnt to manufacture hits from unlikely sources: US wrestlers, actors, the Teletubbies. He also attached himself to hit-makers. One was the man who was to become his nemesis: Simon Fuller, the Spice Girls" manager and creator of the Pop Idol talent-show franchise. Cowell's relationship with Fuller is at the heart of the book. It's a one-sided account, as Cowell co-operated with Bower while Fuller didn't. But a plausible picture emerges of Cowell's co-authorship of the Pop Idol format, which Fuller managed to take control of through the sort of underhand but perfectly legal machinations that are typical of the music industry. Cowell's celebrity derives from his role as acerbic judge on Pop Idol and American Idol ("You sound like a lawnmower" . But the fame was double-edged: the better the shows performed, the more power and money accrued to Fuller. The X Factor was Cowell's revenge. It replaced Pop Idol in the UK and was launched by Cowell in the US, with the aim of knocking American Idol off its perch. Cowell's personal foibles make Sweet Revenge a compulsively entertaining read. Most striking, however, is his brand of business acumen. A true product of the music industry, he is motivated by the lure of the next hit, not longer-term strategic thinking. It took friendship with the billionaire retailer Sir Philip Green to knock sense into Cowell's various music and TV interests. From 2009, Sir Philip has been a key adviser, even negotiating on Cowell's behalf. As for Cowell himself, he could only have emerged in the pop world. He remains in essence the talent spotter who once excitedly announced: "I've discovered this fabulous, sexy Brazilian girl called Karen." The writer is the FT's pop critic