Reproduced from Liverpool Daily Post 21 November, 2005

THE chances are, like millions of other people in the UK on Saturday night, you were glued to the televisual train wreck that is the X-Factor.

But one man who has absolutely no interest in the antics of Simon, Louis and Sharon is Pete Waterman.

Despite having appeared on both Pop Idols one and two, not to mention Popstars the Rivals, the 58-year-old pop impresario has little time for the talent show.

"I look at what they tell people on that show... it's rubbish," he says bluntly. "I don't watch it.

"I'm mates with Simon so if I don't watch it I don't have to comment on it. I just know those shows for me no longer work musically.

"They are television now and they are great television. They are about entertainment - Steve Brookstein or whatever the guy's name is - he didn't exactly set the world alight did he?

"I was asked to be a judge on X Factor but it's not for me any more."

So does he wish he had never got involved in the whole phenomenon?

"I don't regret doing Pop Idol," says Pete who championed eventual winner Will Young right from the very start.

"I think that Pop Idol one was amazing. I regret doing Pop Idol two because I don't think it was honest. I regret that I didn't walk off the show. Everything I said has come to fruition."

"Do I regret doing Popstars the Rivals? Yes because I was stitched up and naive," Pete adds.

On the show his "vocal harmony group" ((read boy band) One True Voice lost out in the race for Christmas Number One to Louis Walsh's Girls Aloud and later disbanded at great embarrassment to Pete, the man who took Steps to multi-million selling stardom.

"There is one clever guy on that show (X Factor) and one only," Pete goes on.. "He owns it and, at the end of the day, he is the one who makes all the money and that's Simon."

While Cowell and Co continue to dominate our television schedules, Pete has his eye firmly back on the music scene and the high-waisted one could soon find himself fighting for his crown with the return of the musical dream team that is Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

Twenty years after they first hit the top spot with You Spin Me Round, by Liverpool's Dead or Alive, the trio have just released SAW Gold - their greatest hits - and, over a decade after they split, Matt, Mike and Pete have put their differences behind them to take on the current pop market.

But why have the guys who brought us everyone from the sublime - Kylie, Jason, Rick Astley, Mel and Kim, Bananarama and Sinita to the ridiculous Pat and Mick, Sam Fox, Big Fun and 2-Unlimited, decided now is the time for a comeback?

"When you go to your kids' schools and at the school discos, they are all playing your stuff you think, hang on a minute, we are missing the boat here," laughs Pete.

"I called Matt and Mike and said, look, there is an interest now in what we did, people suddenly don't think we are the anti-Christ, people are actually owning up that they did like what we did. We are looking at the pop market and thinking certain things we like, certain things we don't like, and we thought there is a need for what we do - nobody's doing it."

The irony is, while their return to the music industry is being heralded right now, in the late 1980s when the Hit Factory (as it became known) was at the peak of its success, the trio were much derided.

"Let's not kid ourselves, we were a fate worse than death," Pete laughs of SAW's reputation. "We were accused of everything but mugging old ladies.

"My job was to produce records and write songs. I didn't have time to sit down and discuss the meaning of life. We were paid to provide hits and the artists only came to us because they wanted hits. They didn't come to us because they liked us.

"We're not politicians; we are not going to change the world; we write pop songs. We've been lucky that the public have bought countless millions of our records and want more and the more we get knocked the more people buy our records, which is the ultimate accolade really."

A multi-millionaire many times over, he lives in a mansion in Northwich with third wife Denise and their two children and also has a home near Warrington.

Pete's life now could not be more different to his early years.

Born in Coventry just after World War II, the man who bought 18 Ferraris in one go and once owned the Flying Scotsman locomotive grew up in poverty.

With little money coming in, the enterprising spirit that would later bring him fame and fortune kicked in early when he sold coal from a pram to his neighbours. By his teens, though, Pete had found the love of his life, music, and busied himself amassing a huge record collection of rare tracks which he would play to friends at parties from a Dansette record player.

Unable to read when he left school, Pete took a job on the railways - that other great love of his life - while making a name for himself as one of the UK's earliest disc jockeys.

Long before the advent of DJ mailing lists and promotional singles, he set up a consultancy for record companies and producers. They sent him the new tracks, he played them and told the companies what the "kids" thought of them.

A job with Mecca which involved doing under-18s discos on a Saturday morning would further help tune his ears to what young people wanted and explain his uncanny ear for a tune that would sell.

But discos and DJing were not enough for the young Pete and in the 1970s he headed for America where he landed his first A&R job working for Philadelphia International working with the likes of the Three Degrees and the Stylistics. A move to Jamaica and the reggae scene allowed him to produce one of his major smashes, Susan Cadogan's Hurts So Good in in 1975 which became the second biggest selling single of the year.

After a stint at Magnet Records in 1979, Pete set up his first company with another producer, Peter Collins. The same year, he became a consultant to the president of MCA music where he produced hits for Tracy Ullman and Alvin Stardust.

However, it was when Pete changed from publishing to the records arm of MCA and signed Nik Kershaw and the new group, Musical Youth, that his svengali status was secured and by 1984 he had his own record label, PWL.

In 1984, he hired young producing duo Matt Stock and Mike Aitken. That same year they released Hazell Dean's Whatever I Do. A new sound which would become known as Hi-NRG was born and so was a music-making empire.

While his professional success is immeasurable, Pete's personal life has not been so rosy of late.

Five years ago, his son Pete jr, aged 22, was badly burned in a karting accident and fell into a coma but has since recovered an now works for PWL.

Then, at the start of this year, just as Pete learned he had been awarded the OBE for services to music in the New Year's Honours list, his eldest son, Paul, 33, died after a long battle against a mystery brain illness.

Pete is stoically pragmatic about the tragedy. "I'm dealing with it," he says - his thick Midlands accent suddenly softening. "Life goes on, I have three other children and he would not have wanted to live the way he was."

As his many public outbursts show, Pete Waterman has no interest in pulling any punches, he sets his goals and achieves them no matter what it takes. But, as he nears his 60th birthday, does he never worry what people think of him?

"No. Why would I? I tell the truth. If people can't live with the truth, that's not my problem."

"Kylie's Kylie. Kylie runs her life and she does it very well. She wants it so she keeps it - she has that hunger. She works hard at it (music) and is therefore very successful at it."

Jason Donovan "Jason didn't want it. He wanted to be the Happy Mondays. He was a fantastic teen idol and one of the nicest guys I have ever met in my life, but just didn't want it. He wanted to be something else and no matter what he sang he was never gonna be the Happy Mondays."

Rick Astley "Rick's different. Rick's just a very shy guy who didn't want the fame and now he just wants to do gigs, that's all he wants. He wants to be able to go and have a curry without people saying 'Didn't you used to be Rick Astley'?"

Sonia "I think Sonia was a bit too young and didn't really go anywhere, got a bit too carried away too quickly. The great thing about human beings is they are all different. I can look back and say things should have been done differently blah, blah, blah... at the end of the day she brought her own advisors in and they advised her."

Steps "I heard 5,6,7,8 which I didn't write and thought it was an incredible little pop record. I looked at the band and thought wow they are fantastic and knew I could do something with them. Did I know it would be as big as they became?

No I didn't. Nobody could have predicted 20 nights at Wembley. We sold something like nine and a half million albums - it's a fairy story. I think they blew it. Claire and H decided they wanted to go solo. I personally think it was wrong but I'm not in charge, all I do is make the records."

* For a time, Pete worked as a grave digger.

* In the late 1970s, Pete was taken on as A&R consultant for an unknown actor who had signed a movie deal. The actor was John Travolta. The films... Grease and Saturday Night Fever.

* In 1979, he was managing a band called the Automatics, they later changed their name to the Specials and formed a company called Two Tone.

* Pete has had more number ones than either The Beatles or Elvis Presley having reached the top spot on no fewer than 22 occasions.

* Between 1988 and 1991, Pete helped Kylie Minogue to secure 13 top-10 hits.

* Prior to the Spice Girls' arrival,, Bananarama were Britain's all-time best-selling group.

* At the height of Acid house, Pete took cameras into Manchester's legendary Hacienda nightclub for his music show with Michaela Strachan, The Hitman and Her securing some of the best footage of the era.

* Stock, Aitken and Waterman are the only songwriters to have won Songwriter of the Year three years in a row.