Simon Cowell gets emotional in "Life Stories" interview

Simon Cowell was interviewed by Piers Morgan on "Life Stories" in the U.K.'s ITV and he came close to tears recounting the moment he learned of his father's death in 1999.

So many changes happening in Simon's life right now. He's on his last season of American Idol -- the show which made him a household name in the U.S. and he is about to embark on a new untested show in the U.S. called "The X Factor" in 2011. Plus he is rumored/confirmed to be engaged to Mezghan Hussainy.

From Daily Mail:

Simon Cowell is not known for his sensitive side. But the talent-show guru had to hold back his tears when he re-lived the moment he discovered his father had died.

With tragic irony, Cowell learned the news after he called his mother to share his ‘euphoria’ that his group Westlife had their first No. 1.

The 50-year-old welled up as he recalled the memory on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories. In the interview Cowell chokes back the emotion when his mother Julie describes the fraught transatlantic phone call in which she broke the news of her husband Eric’s death in 1999.

He recalls his ‘total euphoria’ over Westlife’s success, adding: ‘I believed in the band and I wanted to share the news with my mum and dad, and then [came] the news of what had happened and I had to get back to England.

‘I rang both of them to tell them the news and my mum was acting in kind of a strange way and then she called me back and told me.’

But when Morgan asks about his immediate reaction, Cowell comes close to tears.

‘Oh Piers it was erm, it wasn’t, wasn’t good,’ he says. ‘But you’ve just got to deal with it, you know, and I went back and realised that your first responsibility is that you’ve got to look after your mum. It was a horrible, horrible, horrible time, like I said. You believe everyone is going to live for ever and they don’t.

‘And all the stuff you think you care about, the hit records and stuff like that, it’s just meaningless.’

Source Daily Mail