Why is Simon sulking in the sunshine? Perhaps it's juggling two ex-girlfriends and his very demanding mum on a holiday that's cost him £750,000

• X Factor boss hosts on-off girlfriend Mezghgan Hussainy and mother Julie
• Stays in luxurious hotel in Barbados while ex-fiancee is on private yacht
• Former lover Sinitta joined over New Year

Having to keep the peace between family, friends, ex-partners and mothers-in-law over the fraught festive period is familiar to many of us. If you’re super-rich pop svengali Simon Cowell, there’s only one solution: throw money at it.
Over the past two weeks, Cowell is thought to have spent £750,000 on keeping both his mother Julie and his on-off girlfriend Mezhgan Hussainy happy in the Caribbean.
During Christmas week, for example, which Cowell and his entourage spent on the island of Antigua, the impresario put Julie, 85, in a £2,000-a-night hotel suite. Meanwhile, 39-year-old Mezhgan, Simon’s ex-fiancée, was anchored 200 yards offshore on a lavish private yacht.

Does she lack the X Factor? Simon Cowell only has eyes for his Top Gear magazine and mobile phone while holidaying this week with his ex-fiancee

Simon Cowell is thought to have spent £750,000 on keeping his mother and on-off girlfriend happy in the Caribbean

Julie, fiercely protective of her son, has been hostile towards Mezhgan since the couple broke off their engagement two years ago.
The cost of this ingenious peace-keeping operation? Well, let’s just say that Cowell won’t have had much change from £350,000. And even that figure amounts to less than half of the £750,000 the entire three-week holiday is likely to have cost him by the time he gets home.
First, there is the £270,000 cost of hiring the 196ft, super-yacht Slipstream for a week. This floating palace can accommodate 12 people and is staffed by 14 crew to attend to the X Factor supremo’s every whim. Then there is the £40,000 bill for putting his mother, brother Nicholas and his wife Katie, plus their two children, in the Carlisle Bay hotel, where rooms start at £740-a-night.
On top of that is the £22,000 bill for business class flights Cowell paid to bring everyone together.
But with a net worth thought to be upwards of £225 million, he can afford such extravagances. Indeed, it was reported yesterday that newly filed accounts showed his TV firm had doubled earnings last year — income was up £20 million in America and £26 million in the UK.
On the New Year’s leg of his holiday in his traditional winter haunt of Barbados, he installed Miss Hussainy and another ex-lover, Eighties singer Sinitta, in a shared palatial apartment at a cost of a £20,000 a night.

Simon Cowell and makeup artist Mezhgan Hussainy arrive at the 18th annual Elton John AIDS Foundation's Oscar Viewing Party

Nor are they the only ones benefiting from his largesse.
As well as Sinitta’s two adopted children, the private complex where he has been staying has played host to a freewheeling contingent of guests — including several young men with perfectly tanned, hairless bodies, laid on as eye candy for Sinitta and Mezhgan — who have been sunning themselves by his pool.
The only person missing from the party is Cowell’s current girlfriend, 40-year-old Playboy model and former Baywatch star Carmen Electra, who he recently described as ‘adorable’, though not adorable enough, clearly, to accompany him and his exes on holiday.
At the centre of this gathering is Cowell, 53, orchestrating proceedings and playing benevolent host.
Although he often sees in the New Year in Barbados, this year he has upgraded from his usual suite of rooms at the island’s five-star Sandy Lane hotel. While the hotel has, at various times, welcomed Frank Sinatra, Jackie Onassis, Mick Jagger and the Queen, Cowell has deemed the old Sandy Lane not quite smart enough for him.
This year he has checked into the hotel’s new and even more luxurious sister property, One Sandy Lane, which makes the ritzy original seem like a Travelodge by comparison.
The extended Cowell clan is staying in a £16 million purpose-built suite, one of eight lavish dwellings in the complex, built out of local coral stone and with its own private beach.
His apartment has 14ft-high ceilings, Italian marble floors, ebony and walnut fittings and five bedrooms, all with en suite bathrooms.
Central to its appeal is its privacy. The complex boasts a security centre in the basement that operates on biometrics — typically retina-scanning or fingerprinting — meaning guests don’t need room keys. Any autograph hunters, unwelcome fans or paparazzi immediately set off the sophisticated alarm system.
There is also a private butler and a chef (who has been making healthy green smoothies and skinny muffins for Cowell, who is determined not to put on weight before filming begins on the new series of Britain’s Got Talent in mid-January).

Annual getaway: Simon played with his short locks as Mezghan adjusted her bikini top

Tools for the perfect tan: Simon made sure to apply a coating of sun protector during his lounging session

He also has a personal trainer — Nigel — to put him through a twice-daily workout in the private gym.Which is not to say there hasn’t been time for chilling out with friends such as one-time WAG Lizzie Cundy — who is ‘celebrating’ her divorce from former Chelsea footballer Jason — and another long-time chum, showbiz agent Jonathan Shalit, who are both staying on the island.
But even close friends wonder why Cowell has chosen to spend his holiday with Mezhgan, an Afghan-born, Los-Angeles-raised make-up artist.
After all, within months of presenting her with a £250,000 diamond ring from jeweller’s Graff following their engagement on Valentine’s Day 2010, he had summarily called off their wedding, dubbing the whole thing a ‘big mistake’. It was believed he couldn’t tolerate her jealousy over his close relationships with several of his ex-girlfriends.
Nor was he prepared to compromise on his obsessive work routine. In a best-selling biography of Cowell, published last spring, journalist Tom Bower told a story that added insult to Miss Hussainy’s injury.
Bower revealed that not long after the engagement, Cowell returned home late one night from recording American Idol, on which he was a judge, and found himself having an argument with Mezhgan. His furious fiancée lashed out at him, in front of his widowed mother.
Julie is quoted in Bower’s book as saying: ‘The tension was horrendous. The way Mezhgan behaved made my stomach churn.’ Within weeks, the engagement was off.
Cowell, however, believes in maintaining good relations with his former girlfriends.
He gives them access to his large chequebook, and in return they don’t blab embarrassing secrets about their time together.
Although he and Mezhgan are reconciled sufficiently to holiday together, relations between her and Julie, though civil, retain a certain froideur. Keeping 200 yards of open water between the two most of the time has been imperative.
And Mezhgan isn’t the only ex-girlfriend keeping Cowell company. Despite splitting from him in 2006, Sinitta has been a regular holiday companion, happily lining up on the sun loungers next to other old flames such as Jackie St Clair and Terri Seymour.

Some reading for the sun: The 53-year-old held a copy of Top Gear close to his chest

On the New Year¿s leg of his holiday in his traditional winter haunt of Barbados, Cowell installed Miss Hussainy and another ex-lover, Eighties singer Sinitta, in a shared palatial apartment at a cost of a £20,000 a night

Hussainy showed off her immaculate bikini body as she laid by Simon

She flew out to join Simon on his yacht three days before Christmas with her children, Magdalena, seven, and five-year-old Zac.
Their host later had the task of explaining to the children how Father Christmas managed to get on to the boat and leave presents for them on Christmas morning.
All this week, Sinitta — who is due to travel on to St Barts with Cowell over the coming days — has been posting breathless Tweets about her partying till as late as 7am with the man she calls ‘Silly Simon’. Sinitta, who says she is 44, has also posted pictures of at least two of the young men, in their early 20s, who have been part of Cowell’s loose party of guests, referring to them jokingly as her ‘toy boys’.
Certainly, they have all been treated royally by their host. When one handsome lad — who had earlier been photographed in a pair of lurid pink trunks larking on the steps of the property with Sinitta — flew home to London, he was taken to the airport in a top-of-the-line Range Rover Sport. Cowell, who has denied claims made by Bower that he had a breakdown in the summer, has looked relaxed in photographs taken during this long Caribbean break.
Wearing a collarless white shirt slashed open almost to the waist, he joined revellers at a party at Sandy Lane to see in the New Year, posing gamely for pictures with a New York-based, Essex-born male model called James Taylor.
On Thursday he was photographed reclining on the deck of his yacht reading a copy of Top Gear magazine while Mezhgan lay beside him in a turquoise snake-print bikini drinking a cocktail.
But this holiday could be the calm before the storm. Simon faces a tough year as he attempts to restore ‘Brand Cowell’ to its former glory after both the UK and U.S. versions of The X Factor slumped in the ratings. A disappointing 9.3 million tuned in to the final of the British series last month, 1.3 million fewer than the previous year.
Meanwhile, in the States, the show was trounced by The Voice and he faces having to sack Britney Spears, whom he signed as a judge for the most recent season, but who has proved unpopular with viewers.
Even on this most relaxing of holidays, there has been a sense of storm clouds gathering.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, there have been tense words between Mezhgan and Sinitta. It wasn’t hard to spot the stiff body language when the two women flanked their host at a charity auction for the island’s Hope Sanctuary animal welfare centre the other night.
There will be those, of course, who say that by inviting his former lovers on his £750,000 getaway, Cowell is only getting what he deserves.

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