This man wants to rule the world

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To his critics, Simon Fuller is the Mephistopheles of modern pop music, the Svengali who created the Spice Girls, S Club 7 and television's Pop Idol to foist "manufactured stars" on a gullible audience, largely made up of children and very young people.

To his fans, on the other hand, Fuller is "the first true visionary of modern pop", the man who single-handedly turned wannabe groups and singers into "worldwide brands", by marketing them in exactly the same way as Pepsi. Rumours that he may also rule their lives with a rod of iron, and retain a large percentage of their earnings, remain just that, rumours.

One thing is not in doubt. This shadowy 41-year-old, who hates personal publicity, is the most significant figure in British pop music since Brian Epstein took the four young men who came into his Liverpool record store in 1961 and moulded them into The Beatles.

Fuller is now planning to make Pop Idol a worldwide contest, resulting in an eventual global Planet Earth Pop Idol - with that winner's career, of course, managed by Fuller, as are British winner Will Young and runner-up Gareth Gates.

And his ambition doesn't stop there - he also wants to bring Posh Spice, Victoria Beckham, on to his books, along with her husband, David, to jump-start the football management agency he launched in 1997 when he signed Liverpool's Steve McManaman. "It may sound far-fetched," one of his former employees told me, "but I wouldn't put anything past Simon."

Fuller may never have shown his face on the television panel for Pop Idol, but he is now more of a star than any of the young people the show auditioned. "He is well on his way to becoming the most important single figure in pop music around the world," according to one music business expert. For important, read "also rich". His talent has so far made him a fortune conservatively estimated at £40 million. And that fortune is just the beginning.

When Pop Idol, a television format which Fuller devised three years ago, starts on American television in June, each and every one of the 22 planned programmes will bring its creator a further £1 million.

On top of that, Fuller's "19" group of companies is likely to earn £12 million from advertising deals and the phone calls enthusiastic viewers make as they vote for their favourite singer; as well as another £10 million in royalties from the American winner through a licensing deal with a record company. Then there is the US Pop Idol tour, to bring several million more.

"By the end of this year he could easily be worth at least £100 million," says one industry expert, "and he could easily become a billionaire within five years if he goes on at this rate." Pop expert Peter Robinson, contributing editor of New Musical Express, explains: "Simon is going to create markets, not slip into somebody else's. And he is on the brink of setting the agenda for the pop industry around the world."

Back in Britain the unmarried Fuller is even making a concerted effort to reunite four of the five Spice Girls, and take them back to the worldwide success that stunned the world in 1996 and 1997.

He has also reportedly resumed his relationship with "Baby" Spice, Emma Bunton. She has certainly rejoined the "19" stable of artists. It was Fuller's relationship with Bunton that partly provoked Geri Halliwell and Mel B to sack him as their manager in November 1997. Another reason was the fact that Fuller was reportedly taking 20 per cent of the Girls' revenues, more than any single member. He left with a pay-off of more than £15 million.

Not that Fuller is prepared to discuss any of these details about his businesses, or his relationships. In spite of repeated phone calls, faxes and e-mails from me asking for an interview, Fuller remained silent. So what has this Rasputin of rock and roll got to hide?

"The first thing you have to realise about Simon is that he's utterly brilliant - and utterly ruthless," one of his friends told me privately.

One example of this ruthlessness was his clash with the BBC's Top of the Pops last month, when he demanded that Pop Idol winner Will Young be allowed to sing both songs from his double-A-sided record. The show's director Chris Cowie accused Young's management - that is Simon Fuller - of being "selfish, arrogant and greedy".

Shortly afterwards George Michael urged the Pop Idol winner and his runner-up "to make sure the advice they're getting is completely disconnected from the people involved in that show".

But that is precisely Fuller's style. He likes to command every aspect of his artists' lives and their careers - and sees it as a vital part of their marketing. It was Fuller who encouraged the Spice Girls to sell their own range of toys, endorse cameras and advertise crisps and Pepsi. Without Fuller there would never have been a Spice Girls deodorant.

But then he was fired. The monster he had created - the five girls who symbolised "girl power" - turned round and dumped him. And that taught him a lesson he was never to forget. Fuller made certain that, in future, any group or artist he managed was never powerful enough individually to dispense with his services.

One way of doing so was to make sure they did not receive too much money too soon. "It's complicated," S Club 7's Jo O'Meara admitted only recently. "We get royalties and merchandising fees. We're not yet millionaires, but we're certainly richer than most people our age."

Given their success, that is an astonishing statement. The group's three television series, Miami 7, LA Seven and Hollywood 7, have been seen by 90 million people in 104 countries, while their CDs have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. "Their earnings must be in the millions," one record company executive told me.

Fuller single-handedly created the squeaky-clean S Club 7, who recently changed their name to S Club, in the wake of the departure of one of the original members. He spent more than £1 million in a search for three boys and four girls who could dance and sing, and whom he could package in a comedy-drama television series like The Monkees in the 1960s to promote their records.

"Simon's not just an artist manager," explains Lucien Grainge, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music UK, which distributes S Club 7's records. "He is one of the first people in artist management to treat artists as entertainment brands. He has a real feel for media, TV and sponsorship. He understands the big picture."

It's no mean achievement for this 5ft 9in tall, bouffant-haired man, who was once memorably described as having "an endearing whiff of ballroom-dancer naffness to him".

Given to open-necked black or white T-shirts, and sporting a permanent tan, burnished by visits to his home in Provence - where he manufactures his own olive oil - Fuller "oozes a rather nervous charm" in the words of one former employee. "Until you disagree with him. Then you see another side altogether."

The son of an RAF pilot, who became a teacher and founded schools around the world, Fuller was born in Cyprus, after his father had launched a school there, but the majority of his childhood was spent in Africa, where his father launched another school. He has an elder brother, Kim, who writes comedy scripts and works on film projects for the "19" group, and a younger brother, Mark.

When the family returned to England, Fuller decided to skip university and run local discos instead. "Dad was an entrepreneur at heart," he was to say later. "He was proud that whenever he bought a car he sold it at a profit. Even now I feel like I'm doing what he might have wanted to do."

In his early twenties Fuller landed his "dream job" as a Chrysalis Records talent scout, and made his mark by signing the writers of Holiday, which became Madonna's first hit in 1984. After two years with Chrysalis, however, he turned to management. His first client was Paul Hardcastle, whose song about the Vietnam War, 19, topped the charts in 14 countries, and sold more than four million copies worldwide in 1985.

That is why Fuller's companies are all called 19. The superstitious Fuller took 19 as his lucky number. In the following decade his career as a manager blossomed, bringing Annie Lennox and Gary Barlow as clients. But it was the Spice Girls who launched him into the pop stratosphere.

When they came to Fuller they were still called Spice, and struggling to make an impact. He added Girls to the name, and marketed them with military precision - aiming them primarily at a pre-teen audience - to the astonishment of advertisers and sponsors alike, who insisted he should target older fans. Fuller was proved right, and changed the face of contemporary pop music.

He likes to say: "It's all simple - lots of the best things are." But one thing that is not simple is the "19" group of companies. No less a judge than The Financial Times called the group "secretive" this month, because of its complexity, but private estimates suggest that its turnover will exceed £100 million this year.

The ever-evasive Fuller, with down-to-earth offices just south of Battersea Bridge, steadfastly refuses to divulge any details, financial or otherwise, contenting himself with saying: "In an ideal world it would be great if everyone knew who Simon Fuller was but didn't know what I looked like."

Perhaps the truth is that Fuller's mysteriousness is actually his latest artifice. He deliberately chose to hide from the public gaze to heighten his mystique, slyly marketing himself as a pop guru, creating his image as adeptly as he did his bands.

Look behind the artifice, however, and Fuller's overweening ambition is only too plain to see. That's what he has to hide.

 

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