Simon Fuller

We have things to cover.

Uh, y'all, American Idol is all based on Pop Idol, which was created by Simon Fuller and Nigel Lythgoe, famously of, who decided he wanted to be on camera and do So You Think You Can Dance.

But Nigel Lythgoe got his start in American Idol.

Um, and then Nigel Lythgoe found this show called Popstars in New Zealand, and he says, "Let's make that in the UK," and it became Pop Idol.

Yeah.

And all the, all the networks.

So, so Simon Fuller, Simon Cowell, and Nigel Lythgoe pitched this to every single American network.

They all passed, uh, until Fox and UPN said yeah.

So we've talked a lot about Kim Fuller on this show because he was one of Lenny Henry's main writers.

And he is the brother of Simon Fuller, the guy who managed the Spice Girls.

And he wrote Spice World, the movie, which is a special episode that we've just done.

So, yes, that's Kim Fuller's connections.

And then the movie Spice World came out around the same time.

And they had fired Simon Fuller, who was their manager, I think right before the second album, I think, something like that.

Okay.

So interesting.

And it was just...

And Michael Caine, Dick and I, just before COVID, did a documentary on the 60s, which we wrote and also produced with Michael Caine and Simon Fuller.

And it was told through the prism of Michael's experiences.

And he said...

including one for Most Outstanding Song Collection, recognizing her entire career.

She's one of many music artists who got their start with the entertainment mogul Simon Fuller.

It's almost impossible to count the number of pies in which Fuller has had his fingers over the past 30 years.

But he's best known as the former manager of the Spice Girls and S Club 7 and the mastermind behind Pop Idol and American Idol, as well as David and Victoria Beckham's Business Empire.

And what he wanted was to be really wealthy.

And so he signed up with Victoria's manager, Simon Fuller, who managed the Spice Girls as well.

And it was the two of them who kind of set up Bran Beckham.

So he was the one who had the unusual ambition, because she had the basic ambition of everyone who's famous for being a pop star, which is, I just want to carry on being famous as a pop star.

And that's one of the things I really liked about the film is how they send up the nature of what's going on around them at the time as well.

So the idea to make a film of the Spice Girls was always in Simon Fuller's mind.

The Spice Girls manager and creator, if you like, was considering the idea before Wannabe was even a hit.

But after it was on both sides of the Atlantic by January 1997, things got serious.

It was a bit too Disney-fied, Kim remembers.

I think it was about a young single mother of one of the girls fighting hardship to form the band.

Disney's option ran out and Simon Fuller tasked his brother with writing the script.

And Kim had only one thing in mind, an updated version of A Hard Day's Night, which is just as well considering that's the episode we've just done.

They didn't just go completely haywire, but they were making it happen.

I've been lucky to work in some amazing businesses, one of which was Simon Fuller's XIX Entertainment.

And And I remember being told by Robert Dodds, the CEO, saying the greatest skill is just making something happen.

Anyone can have an idea, anyone can have a sort of a project going, but actually making it happen, I think is the biggest skill.