Simon Cowell fears his girlfriend will leave him broke

Simon Cowell is known as TV's Mr Nasty, leaving dozens of musical hopefuls quaking in their boots -- but the one thing that leaves him running scared is marriage -- because he fears his longterm girlfriend, Terri Seymour will do a Heather Mills and leave him broke.

Heather Mills, of course, is in the middle of a High Court divorce battle with former Beatle Paul McCartney -- where she is believed to be demanding a $110m chunk out of Paul's estimated $1.6bn fortune.

"I don't believe in marriage, certainly not in this business," says 48-year-old Simon - who's believed to be worth around $200m. "The truth is that you get married and in a year or two they clean you out! It's just not going to work."

"We have contracts with artists that are 120 pages long and last five years. Then you go into marriage with no contract and the laws are a thousand years old. It doesn't work - it changes you. That whole culture just puts you in a very weakened position.

"I think the laws are crazy. I know a lot of people going through divorces now and once the lawyers get involved it starts to get nasty."

Fortunately for the multi-millionaire music mogul, Terri, 33, accepts his view of things. And, according to Simon, she also shrugged off the speculation that he had fallen for his fellow judge Dannii Minogue on the last series of TV talent series X Factor - something he dismisses. "There were rumors about Dannii and I," he tells Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper.

"If you work with cute girls you get that. But I don't have to smooth anything over with Terri. She understands."