Simon Cowell on Cheryl Cole: "I'm not a monster, I was protecting her."

The Mirror has an interview with Simon Cowell about the Cheryl Cole X Factor mess where he says that he was trying to protect Cheryl all this time.

After he realized that Cheryl wasn't a good fit in the U.S., he decided that it would be best for her to return to the U.K. version of the show. To make it more attractive for her, they offered her more money plus the opportunity for a "grand entrance" at the start of the auditions there.

Whatever. Spin. Spin. Spin.

Does anyone still care about this? They've dragged this on for weeks. I think this has created more damage than good.

From The Mirror

Cowell said: “The hardest thing to accept is that everyone has painted me as a monster because I embarrassed her, but the truth was I was protecting her. I just want people to be in the best place at the right time.”

He added: “When she turned down the UK show, we got back in touch and said, well she is still under contract with the US show so we invited her back. Her position was still there.

“We had some heated conversations with her US manager Will.i.am and he inferred this wasn’t a genuine offer. They thought that if she didn’t turn up on Wednesday then we wouldn’t pay her.

“We made it clear that she was always going to be paid in full. We got to the point on Saturday when we genuinely thought she was going to accept the offer but again neither she nor they returned any calls. So we’ve announced Nicole.”