Popstars: The Rivals - How rich is Pete Waterman?

Quite rich. He certainly diid not have to do Popstars: the Rivals to pay the interest on the mortgage.

"One day," he said, "I looked in a drawer and there was a cheque for £2.4 million. It had been there for four months."

Pete started as a DJ playing records such as "Jump Up and Down and Wave Your Knickers in the Air."

But he made his money developing and promoting new music talent and the money just rolled in. At the beginning of 1984 he set up a new music label PWL. He also signed two producer/writers called Mike Stock and Matt Aitken. Their first hit came after only four months of working together - Hazell Dean "Whatever I do (Wherever I Go)".

At one time the bands he was promoting represented more then 10% of all the music sold in the UK. More recently he has been behind bans like Steps and Westlife. And of course those developed in the Popstars series. Pete has been behind 19 number one hits and sales of more than 500 million record.

Pete's fortune has been estimated at about £45 million. Recently, he has admitted that classical composers helped him along the way.

He said that the single which launched Kylie Minogue to pop stardom, I Should Be So Lucky, was borrowed from Pachelbel’s Canon.

He added: "I’ve stolen from Wagner about 20 times and what I take from him is pathos, string runs and harmonies. We changed a few things around, but if you listen to You Spin Me Round the strings are straight off Valkyries — they do all the glissandos and the wind-ups. They do the same things, but differently.

"My job is to make sure you can’t spot it. If I’m good at what I do, you shouldn’t be able to hear where I’ve taken it from," he said in an interview for the November 2002 issue of the BBC Music Magazine.