Talent judge Simon Cowell faces his biggest challenge yet: Fatherhood

Much of the forgiveness that the world extends to Simon Cowell is based on the reassuring notion that he is a one-off. Oh, Simon has multiplied and proliferated in various ingenious ways over the years, but now we face the ultimate brand extension — the arrival of a Cowell Jr.

The prospect of fatherhood for the acrylic-complexioned television-talent-show mogul comes with major complications. For a start, the mother-to-be, Lauren Silverman, 36, a New York "socialite", is married to Andrew Silverman, a real-estate dealer, who is — or was — one of Cowell's best friends.

According to Andrew's brother, Alexander, Cowell's entanglement with Lauren amounts to "an unbelievable story of betrayal", but that's not all that makes it unbelievable. For years, Cowell, 53, has been telling interviewers that he didn't want to have children, and while his insistence carried a smack of poignancy, it wasn't hard to see his reasoning.

He lives a strange life, moving between homes, all furnished and decorated in exactly the same way, with white leather sofas and chrome mirrors, trailed by an entourage of close friends and acolytes.

This lifestyle has generally suited Simon well, facilitating both his oddities and his sweaty hyper-devotion to work. At the same time it has fed the idea that he is not merely, as he has put it, "a little bit mad", but sad, too, and emotionally cauterised against the perils of love and human sympathy.

Virtually all his known relationships have been brief and inconsequential, and are collectively summarised by him as "boring". It is no surprise that the idea of fatherhood has drained the blood from his caramelly chops.

"God, no, I couldn't have children," he once said. "If I had them they'd be drawing on the walls, and I'd go nuts. With kids you've got a routine you can't escape from." Not that Cowell is entirely opposed to routines. Having attuned his life to a kind of mid-Atlantic time, he wakes up every day at noon, spends an hour watching cartoons, usually in the bath, then works, with only token breaks, until 5 am.

All his suits are by Tom Ford, all his knitwear from Prada. His beauty regime is exhaustive, featuring colonic irrigation, which, he says, "makes my eyes shine brighter", intravenous vitamin transfusions, monthly botox jabs, and a procedure involving oils and cling film to "detoxify and oxygenate" his skin. To keep the air fresh around him, he spends pounds 3,000 a week on flowers.

"Maintenance," he sighs, "is a bitch." But so is growing older, especially when you have no one to share the passing years with. So there may come a moment in a man's life when he starts to think about his legacy, and how he will be remembered, and he realises that children can offer a handy solution.

Cowell has known the Silvermans, who have a seven-year-old son, for several years. Two years ago, the couple were among the guests on a yacht the impresario had chartered in the British Virgin Islands.

Lauren posted a photograph of herself entwined with Cowell beneath the caption: "My little Simey monster," which she later deleted. US newspapers last week suggested that the Silvermans' marriage had been rocky for some time, although some accounts claimed that Andrew had filed for divorce only after learning of his wife's pregnancy.

First-time fatherhood in your sixth decade is a tough beat. Not only physically, but in the surrendering of the life, freedoms and conveniences you knew before. Prof William Pollack of Harvard University, an expert on late-life fatherhood, says: "It's no easy thing for such men. They may give the impression of coping, feeling proud of what they have done, denying all the physical evidence around them, but inside they are probably going doolally."

Cowell's reluctance to embrace commitment has no obvious explanation in his own childhood. He was born in Brighton into a close and relatively well-to-do family, and raised in Elstree, Hertfordshire.

His father ran the property portfolio of EMI records, and his mother was a former dancer. His older half-brother, Tony, remembers him as a "highly competitive teenager", who "always wanted a faster car and a prettier girlfriend".

Privately schooled at Dover College, Cowell achieved little of academic note and left at 15 to take a job in the post room of his father's company. Soon he was a pop industry talent scout, working with the famed record producer Pete Waterman.

By the age of 20, he had made — and lost — a million. "I've had many failures," he says. "The biggest were at times when I believed my own hype. I was a typical Eighties cliche. I had the cars, the house, the image … I spent too much time at parties, and then everything imploded. Losing everything is probably the greatest lesson you learn. I went back to my parents' house and started again."

His move into television and the following successes — Pop Idol, The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent — have earned Cowell a fortune estimated at pounds 200?million and secured his place as the most powerful man in British entertainment.

Yet the narcissism, the affectations, the detachment, the lack of gallantry (his relationship with Dannii Minogue was dismissed as "a few bonks"), have weighed heavily against this. But he remains a master of the tricky situation, and if he handles the latest properly, he might yet emerge as a better man.