Simon Cowell has vowed to “slow down” and no longer work full time, friends have revealed.
The Britain’s Got Talent and former X Factor boss will still appear on his TV shows in the UK and America but wants to spend more of his life with son Eric and wife-to-be Lauren in the coming years.
One friend likened it to “edging into a kind of semi-retirement” with less work spread over a year and said he had “no appetite” to be hands-on and tinker with his TV shows anymore.
Sources close to Cowell say the pandemic has made him realise he was working too much and it could affect his health if he carried on putting so much pressure on himself.
The source said: “He doesn’t want to work at that pace anymore.
“His back injury from the bike accident in 2020 and the pandemic have made him refocus his life and at 62 Simon knows he is not getting any younger.
The days of staying up working until 3am and constantly being on his phone trying to make deals are gone forever.
“Someone like Simon will find it hard to let go and not work but for him this is like edging into a kind of semi-retirement. He won’t be working every day and will pick and choose his work a lot more going forward.”
UK viewers will get a look at the new laid back Cowell when BGT starts next month on ITV and he will begin a promo campaign for the series next week.
In recent days Cowell has been working in the States judging America’s Got Talent acts in Pasadena.
And he showed he was certainly relaxing in-between sessions as he arrived for auditions wearing a pyjama-style loungewear set.
In January, Cowell closed the UK offices of his Syco TV company and has only kept a handful of staff.
He is also discussing with friends the idea of being a “TV face” and doing less and less work off camera, where he used to be known for chopping and changing things sometimes just hours before a show aired.
The move is a sharp contrast to how Cowell worked when he created The X Factor and made it into one of the biggest shows on TV for a decade.
He would watch and edit the episodes until the early hours of the morning and stay up late with transatlantic phone calls, often going to be in the middle of the night and then being uncontactable until around midday.
The source added: “Eric has totally changed his lifestyle and his life.
"There is no going back to the old way of working. He is already feeling the benefits.”
Cowell is still wearing a wrist brace two months after breaking his arm in a serious e-bike accident.
It was his second “horror” crash, which came 18 months after he broke his back following a similar fall.
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