Simon Cowell not proud of affair, but he has embraced family life

Simon Cowell has regrets, but his baby son’s not one.

How that baby started off, well, that’s another story.

Cowell, of course, was caught in an affair last summer with now-girlfriend Lauren Silverman, who was still married to Cowell pal Andrew Silverman when little Eric-to-be was conceived.

“I regret that part,� Cowell tells the Mirror. “But then of course you have a baby and you look at the baby and you kinda go, ‘This is what happened from it.’

“In this situation you are not going to come out of this well because of the circumstances. It is not something I am proud of or wanted to happen in terms of hurting anyone. It just happened. You have to deal with it and man up to it. You have to accept the responsibility and the criticism.�

The Silvermans are now divorced, and she’s hanging with the former “American Idol� judge in his West London home base, which has become a much different place since Eric arrived.

The “Britain’s Got Talent� creator and judge, who says he was diagnosed as depressed before the scandal broke, now finds his formerly sterile home filled with a family, baby gear and Silverman’s two dogs, Squiddly and Diddly.

“It is a weird existence when you live on your own. On the phone all night, blah blah blah,� he told the paper. “Now the house is full of people, it has become a home rather than a house.�

He said he’s now more focused, because he’s had to put work into perspective, switching his phone off a lot of the time after hours. He does deal with his U.S. business in the middle of the night, but that’s when he’s up feeding Eric.

“There is something about the noise of people around you that maybe triggers something back to when you were a kid in my house,� Cowell said. “That is probably what I am going through and why I am embracing it so easily. Eric doesn’t cry much, he’s as good as gold. ... I love it. The dogs are mad and Lauren is not exactly the most quiet person in the world.�

That said, he seems pleased having her around.

“The great thing about Lauren is she loves what I do, so she sits in if I am watching ‘Britain’s Got Talent,’ for example, and she has got a good opinion. And I seem to have got my mojo back again.�

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