Simon Cowell: I’m going to freeze my body when I die so I can be brought back to life

Simon Cowell has been humiliating talent show contestants with his caustic comments for years. Now if he gets his way, he could still be tormenting them in the next century.

The television mogul wants to have his body frozen after his death so he can be brought back to life in the future.

He told guests at a private dinner hosted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown: ‘I have decided to freeze myself when I die. You know, cryonics. You pay a lot of money and you get stuck in a deep freeze once you’ve been declared dead.

Ice Man: Simon Cowell, pictured with ex-girlfriend Sinitta, let slip his cryonics plan at a dinner hosted by the PM

‘Medical science is bound to work out a way of bringing us back to life in the next century or so, and I want to be available when they do.

I would be doing the nation an invaluable service.’

Mr Brown, whose guests at the Downing Street function included Mail on Sunday columnist Piers Morgan, actress Amanda Holden and BBC1’s The One Show presenter Christine Bleakley, was less enthused by the idea.

‘I am not sure me coming back from the dead would be quite as popular as Simon,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘In fact, there may be a public campaign to stop me being frozen!’

Proponents of cryonics pay between £20,000 and £120,000 to have their bodies frozen in the hope that medics can thaw them out sometime in the future when science has advanced sufficiently.

Two firms in the US offer the service – the Cryonics Institute and Alcor. More than 160 people have already been frozen with a further 1,000 signed up worldwide, including about 100 in England.

For those who pay the fee, a trained team is sent as soon as they die to take care of their body.

First their blood is drained and replaced with a preservative fluid. Then their corpse is cooled in a huge vacuum flask of liquid nitrogen at nearly -196C (-321F).

Those who have their bodies frozen hope their memories, personality and identity will be stored indefinitely in their brain cells. However, experts are sceptical that medical science will ever reach a point when they can be revived.

Moreover, the cryonics industry has had its disasters. In 1979, nine bodies stored in a cemetery in California thawed out because the company involved ran out of money.

Procedures similar to cryonics have been featured in a number of science fiction stories. One of the most famous films featuring cryonics was Forever Young, starring Mel Gibson.

Cowell, 49, is best known for his appearances as a judge on The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent. Last year he split with girlfriend Terri Seymour but has been spending time with another former flame, singer Sinitta.

His fame has been fuelled by his signature phrase ‘I don’t mean to be rude but …’, inevitably followed by an often blunt assessment of the

contestant’s talents, personality or even physical appearance. At the dinner with Mr Brown, however, Cowell struck a positive note, saying the spirit that helped Britain through two world wars would see it through the recession.

‘This is still a great country,’ he told the Premier. ‘You just need to make people feel proud of it again, like we do on Britain’s Got Talent.’