Simon Cowell has revealed that he’d love to work with Cheryl Cole again, following their emotional reunion on last week’s Saturday Night Takeaway – and says it would just take “the right show”.

Simon Cowell once revealed he’d love to have dated Cheryl Cole, but had been knocked back – yet years later, he’s still keen to reunite with his former X-Factor co-star on another show. Fans of the feisty on-screen pairing were overjoyed by his latest comments live from the red carpet at the Britain’s Got Talent launch event this week.

“She hasn’t changed at all,” he marvelled to The Sun, before confessing: “I miss her.” He explained they’d had “great fun working together” in the past, so Saturday Night Takeaway – where the pair joined fellow stars including Alison Hammond, Rylan Clark, Dermot O’Leary and Davina McCall – had been “a bit of a reunion”.

Definitely, I would work with her again in the future with the right show because I think she was a really, really good judge,” he declared of the former Girls Aloud songstress. She was joined on stage on Saturday by her fellow bandmates Kimberley Walsh, Nicola Roberts, and Nadine Coyle – with the late Sarah Harding, who tragically died of breast cancer in 2021, being the only woman missing from the nostalgic Girls Aloud line-up.

Cheryl and Simon go back a long way, with Cheryl originally stepping in as a replacement for Sharon Osbourne, after she left the X Factor judging panel back in 2008. The banter between them quickly made them a hit, although Simon later ended speculation about their chemistry by confirming that their friendship had been strictly platonic.

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In the 2012 biography Sweet Revenge, Simon revealed: “I adored her… I would have liked an affair with Cheryl.” He added: “I felt like a mouse being played with by a beautiful cat.”

Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole’s reunion on Saturday Night Takeaway last week (Image: ITV/REX)

He added during an interview with the Radio Times that he “wasn’t going to lie” about his feelings for working with a stunning co-star.

“I mean literally, when [Cheryl] walked on set on the first day in the UK I thought that she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life,” he explained.

However, Simon has since moved past his crush, going on to commit to fiancée Lauren Silverman, with whom he shares a ten-year-old son, Eric.

Meanwhile, Cheryl had a baby boy called Bear, with ex-One Direction singer Liam Payne, who is now six.

Although Simon and Cheryl got on famously on screen despite their age gap, that’s more than can be said for Sharon, who recently fumed: “Thank God I’m not in Simon’s friendship circle!”

Talking at her Cut The C**p tour in London earlier this year, she expressed her disappointment with being ousted from the show on account of her “age”.

She’d also teased that she might be spilling secrets about him when she made her appearance on Celebrity Big Brother along with fellow X Factor judge Louis Walsh back in March.

“He’s going to need more Botox after we finish with him!” she cackled to The Sun.