Britain’s Got Talent featured a face-meltingly incredible act last weekend, literally. Simon Cowell was embroiled into a magician’s trick on stage, where the Miki Dark made it appear as though he set Simon Cowell’s head on fire – spoiler alert, he didn’t… it was just a magic trick.
What was the public’s response? Other than general shock and awe, a whole lot of trolling about Simon’s face ‘melting anyway’. The 63-year-old TV personality has faced consistent online abuse for his looks in recent years, with viewers tweeting vile jokes while watching the performance like ‘That explains Simon's melted face.’
The commentary has spun into online search data too, with Simon Cowell trending this morning. ‘What happened to Simon Cowell’s face?’ is a popular breakout search term for the star, as well as ‘What’s wrong with Simon Cowell’, ‘Simon Cowell accident’ and ‘Has Simon Cowell had a stroke?’. Seemingly, some are wondering whether he’s suffered some kind of illness or incident to cause his change in appearance – ‘Has Simon Cowell been shot?’ is even a major search for the BGT judge.
What's happened to Simon Cowell’s face?
Even BGT hosts Ant and Dec have got involved in the discourse, with the duo joking that the newest face on the judging panel (which is Bruno Tonioli), is ‘Simon’s new face’. Simon was evidently in on the joke, laughing along, and has recently clarified that his change of appearance is due to cosmetic surgery.
Has Simon Cowell had plastic surgery?
Simon does, however, insist that the rumours of his plastic surgery are massively exaggerated.
‘I haven’t had a facelift or anything,’ he told The Sun. ‘I have had a bit of Botox or whatever but kind of nothing drastic. So, when I hear about this stuff honestly, it does make me laugh. Over the years people have said that I’ve had everything done. But I don’t Google myself, so I genuinely don’t have a clue what everyone is saying about me until we do things like BGT.’
Simon didn’t share whether he’d experienced any health issues that might contribute to a change in appearance, but frankly he shouldn’t have to. With so much commentary around his ‘new face’, it appears the public think he’s fair game to troll for his appearance. In actual fact, surgery or not, it’s just as unfair to abuse Simon Cowell for his changing face as it is anyone else – even more so if people genuinely believe he’s suffered a stroke or serious accident.
Was Simon Cowell in an accident?
Perhaps there’s confusion over the accident he did have in January 2022 though, where Simon reportedly fell off an electric bike. He was said to have slipped off the bike while not wearing a helmet and fell into the middle of a road, where he received assistance from bystanders. Simon broke his arm and has since fully recovered, but the accident is eerily similar to his 2020 bike accident where he was knocked off balance and broke his back – for which he had surgery and spent a month recovering at his home in Malibu.
Neither of these accidents are reported to have damaged his face, and Simon has been open about cosmetic treatments being the reason he looks different. Given his transparency – which he doesn’t really owe anyone – it’s fair to say he doesn’t seem to care at all about the public’s opinion on his new look, but that doesn’t mean it’s right to troll him for it.