Simon Cowell opens up about the death of his mother

Last weekend Simon Cowell got tearful during the audition of Josh Daniels on The X Factor.

X Factor hopeful Josh sang a very emotive version of Labrinth's *Jealous, *during which the camera panned to Simon as he started tearing up.

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After the audition, the music mogul couldn't speak and turned to fellow judge Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, who was also crying, to take over for a minute.

Now the 55-year-old has revealed he was thinking about his late mother, Julie, during Josh's performance.

Speaking to Loose Women's Ruth Langsford and Jane Moore, Simon said: "It was quite near when it all happened and I think it was the last audition and I wasn't really expecting what happened."

He added: "And of course the lyric of the song and it was quite difficult because I thought, 'God this is going to be really hard to sit through this.'

"But then you've got to think of [Josh] and it's his moment, but yes it was very emotional."

Simon also spoke of how Julie was a big fan of the ITV singing show.

"She was a huge fan of the show, she loved the show, which sort of made the decision, 'When do you go back to work on something like this?' because it's hard and it really was what I thought she would have said to me which was, 'No 100% you've got to go back to work.'"

X Factor audion styles: