Cowell goes from strength to strength

Simon Cowell comes out of the Cheryl Cole X Factor debacle relatively unscathed.

In many ways, Simon Cowell couldn't be riding higher at the moment. As the fifth series of Britain's Got Talent drew to a close last week, the show had bounced back from a ratings slump to attract more viewers than last year's finale. On the other side of the Atlantic, the sixth series of America's Got Talent premiered on May 31, attracting higher audiences than any of the previous five season premieres. Meanwhile, the US version of X Factor is currently filming and set to start airing in September.

But his latest successes have not come entirely untroubled by negative headlines. In the UK last week, Cowell called in the police to investigate an anonymous 2,500-word blog post that alleged, among other things, that the final of the show had been rigged in favour of the 12-year-old Justin Beiber wannabe Ronan Parke. In the event, almost 15 million people tuned in to watch 24-year-old Jai McDowall be crowned the victor, beating Parke fair and square, albeit by just 2.5 per cent more votes.

Before the final, Parke lept to the defence of Cowell and the production crew, saying: "I've never met Simon in my life. I'd love to but never have. I've been coached by the same teacher in Norwich that we pay for and no one's paid for our clothes or anything. It's really silly." So silly, in fact, that the blog was eventually removed from the offending website and Cowell's lawyers made a report of the offence of malicious communication to the police.

Before that had come the furore surrounding the rise and fall of Cheryl Cole's X Factor career. Her very public fall from Cowell's favour may have simply been down to the machinations endemic in TV politics, but the resulting publicity will certainly have done no harm to the future ratings of the show.

For months, the tabloids had been filled with tales of Cole's imminent arrival on the US version of X Factor and her training for the breaking of America (weight-loss programmes, elocution lessons and so on). Then she was dropped, without any reason being given, and has since been dropped from the line-up of the UK version too. Everyone's a winner: she got paid, and the ongoing search for a replacement and speculation about Cole's future will keep the gossip bubbling away. Sure, Cowell doesn't come out of it smelling of roses, but when was his public persona anything other than pantomime villain, whipping the public into a booing frenzy?

One of the questions this inevitably raised, though, was whether the incident was symptomatic of a wider malaise. Does this mean, people wondered, that the shows don't hold enough fascination on their own? Can we look forward to a distinct lack of Susan Boyle-style human interest stories, to be replaced with pure celebrity tittle-tattle?

This week, speculation surfaced that Cole could in fact rejoin the X Factor judging team, having been offered a lifeline by Cowell. If she does, it would undoubtedly represent a significant publicity coup for the show. Intriguingly, however, there was talk of a counter offer from a show that has been dubbed "the anti-X Factor".

The Voice originated on Dutch television, and the US version has just finished a successful first season on NBC. Its twist on the reality talent show format is that the auditions are conducted "blind", with the judges able to hear the contestants sing but not see what they look like. Producers claim that this makes the whole process more of a true test of talent than a beauty contest.

All slightly disingenuous, of course - the viewers can still see the contestants after all - but that hasn't stopped the show from being a hit around the world. The British version, with which Cole has been linked, is set to start airing next year.

Whatever Cole decides, it's unlikely that any of this will unseat Cowell, who has been the king of talent shows since he first appeared as a judge on Pop Idol in 2001, succeeding from - and vanquishing in meanness - "Nasty" Nigel Lythgoe on Popstars. He has had notoriously stormy relationships with his co-stars, particularly American Idol's Paula Abdul (who is back in the fold with X Factor this season), but Cowell always comes out of the spats with his unperturbed smirk intact. With a track record as an A&R man, of signing some of the 1980s' most popular mainstream names, everyone wants to be noticed by the archetypal critical Brit, and that doesn't look set to change, whichever side of the Atlantic he's busy goading.