Simon Cowell

The end of the animal trade would leave more time to trap or beat to death pop star wannabes.

I do a couple of hundred press-ups a day but I haven't been to a gym in years.

I grew up when the whole Motown thing was huge. The charts in those days were dominated by groups more than solo artists at one point.

At 20, you're cocky and you think you can rule the world, and you get it all wrong.

If I said to most of the people who auditioned, 'Good job, awesome, well done,' it would have made me actually look and feel ridiculous. It's quite obvious most of the people who turned up for this audition were hopeless.

Britain's got talent, enormous talent; that's very obvious.

I have always hated celebrities lecturing people on politics.

I work out three or four times a week, I have Botox, take tons of vitamins and vitamin infusions - if you believe that these things work, you will feel better.

Every time I sat in a chemistry lesson, I thought, 'What am I doing this for? I don't ever want to be in a job that involves a Bunsen burner.'

I don't want to tell a 15 or 14 year old what they should be doing. I want them to tell me. And that's what I got when I met Justin Bieber for the first time.

I still put punctuation in my texts. If it's an 'I', I make sure it's a capital.

I think you have to judge everything based on your personal taste. And if that means being critical, so be it. I hate political correctness. I absolutely loathe it.

I've spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the very best security and I can assure you my homes are as safe as the Bank of England.

Choosing how you vote should not be a snap verdict based on a few minutes of television.

Holding auditions in front of an audience is testing.

There's no need for me to get married. I live with someone; we're happy; end of story.

The young people working for me are ambitious and hard-working. That work ethic has always been a trait of the British.

The minute you start assuming that the audience is very happy to see the same show again, you're dead.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning.