Louis Theroux has made claims that Simon Cowell was paraded around with various women to tease the press with ‘fake romances’.
The acclaimed filmmaker hosted a talk at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday evening in promotion of his new book, Gotta Get Theroux This.
In one of his many anecdotes, Theroux claimed disgraced PR guru Max Clifford, who died in 2017, used to orchestrate relationships for Simon in an attempt to play the media.
According to Louis, one of these so-called romances included an exotic dancer from famous London nightclub Spearmint Rhino.
But Simon has denied ever having a fake relationship for the press.
Louis, 49, told the audience: ‘With Max Clifford, he took against me midway through filming because he kept saying stuff to my director off the record to do with a stage managed relationship with Simon Cowell, his then client.
‘Max was arranging photoshoots with a dancer from the exotic dancing club The Spearmint Rhino, and the sexy club was also one of Max’s promotional things.
‘Anyway, Max said to Alicia, my director, “It’s not a real relationship. I’m just arranging it to feed the tabloid stories in order to keep them happy and keep the right stories in the tabloids and the wrong stories out”, to manage Simon Cowell’s profile.’
The filmmaker, who released his documentary When Louis Met… Max Clifford, grew frustrated with Clifford allegedly trying to shape the narrative of the film.
‘Either way, I said to Max, “You can’t tell my director one thing and expect me not to ask about that”,’ Louis explained.
‘[I said] “That’s ridiculous. I’m not agreeing to present some Max Clifford version of events. If it’s a fictitious relationship then I’m going to call you on that.” He took against me after that and started feeding stories to the tabloids about me. Just silly, but oddly upsetting.’
According to Louis, Clifford’s so-called fake stories were as petty as his bad breath.
‘He said that I had bad breath and it really offended and upset me. No one likes people alleging they have bad breath,’ Louis said.
‘The next time I interviewed him I was chewing some kind of chewing gum because he had me worried about it. And then he leaked that as a follow up story.’
Clifford died in December 2017 at the age of 74 following a heart attack while serving an eight-year prison sentence for sex offences.
Metro.co.uk have contacted Simon’s reps for comment.
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