Simon Cowell has credited vaping with helping him to quit his 80-a-day smoking habit.
The music mogul, 63, said he switched to vapes after suffering from a bout of laryngitis last year that caused him to lose his voice.
He said: “It was really, really tough because I lost my voice.. and when that happened obviously I couldn’t smoke, so that helped.
“I thought, ‘If I have done four days without a cigarette, I can do a week,’ and then I thought, ‘This is the moment, touch wood.’”
A flavoured vape was the key
Cowell, who would get through 80 cigarettes a day while often working through the night, said he had tried vaping in the past but not been successful. He said it took finding a flavour he likes to help him finally give up smoking.
He said: “The vape has been successful. It’s a good one, it tastes nice and sweet.
“I have smoked for a long, long time and sometimes it is just habit,” he added. “But these things do help.”
The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent creator also revealed his driver used to smoke 40 a day and managed to quit thanks to vaping. “My driver was on 40-a-day and he has cut out smoking completely,” he said.
Cowell could be seen leaving the Britain’s Got Talent studios earlier this year carrying his refillable vape. “It is quite sexy, it is big and chunky,” he said.
A lifestyle overhaul
The X Factor creator, who has son Eric, nine, with his 45-year-old fiancé Lauren Silverman, admitted he used to stay up all night working, smoking and drinking lager.
But a fall from an electric bike in August 2020 that broke his back and left him wheelchair-bound after six hours of surgery led him to change his ways.
He said that, like his laryngitis that led him to swap deadly cigarettes for vapes, the accident turned out to be “one of the best things” that ever happened to him.
Since overhauling his lifestyle, diet and fitness routine, he said he has managed to lose three stone in weight. “It had to happen sooner or later,” he said.
Cowell, due to turn 64 in October, said as well as focusing on his fitness, he now refuses to live his life around work.
He said: “Years ago I would literally work through the night. That was just normal for me. Now there has to be a cut-off.
“Now it’s kind of like 5.30pm or 6pm, and that’s it. I don’t break that rule, and weekends are weekends.”
