It's been 15 years since Tiffany topped the charts with hits like I Think We're Alone Now, but Simon Fuller imagines her back onstage singing her heart out to a whole new audience--one he has created. At the advanced age of 31, Tiffany has been trying to create buzz (even undressing for Playboy) without much success. But would she take part in a TV talent contest for faded stars--one like American Idol, last summer's smash hit, but with the added pathos of careers in decline? The grand prize would be a recording contract and perhaps the start of a comeback. Tiffany's competitors? Oh, Fuller wants no less than Vanilli, the surviving member of the duo Milli Vanilli (infamous for secretly miming its songs), and Vanilla Ice, the formerly huge white rapper.
"The working title is Second Chance Idol," Fuller tells TIME during a rare interview in his temporary Los Angeles quarters (he also has a home in London). The plan is to "go to people who have had a taste of fame but, sadly, their candle has been snuffed."
This TV show doesn't exist yet, but it just might by summer. If there's one thing reality TV has confirmed, it's that people will do almost anything for 15 minutes of shame. Fuller, 42, a British entertainment entrepreneur, exploits this as well as anyone. He's the creator of Britain's Pop Idol, its offshoot American Idol in the U.S. (also a hit) and the current Germany Seeks the Superstar, which drew almost 7 million viewers to its most recent episode and gives up nothing in schmaltz to the U.S. version. A recording of the show's 10 finalists singing a tune called We Have a Dream has sold more than 250,000 copies.
Fuller has become rich by putting fame-hungry performers in front of audiences eager to see them squirm. His web of privately held entertainment companies, known as the 19 Group, is estimated by industry analysts to be worth more than $300 million. But with reality TV looking ripe to go the way of prime-time soap operas and other fads, the genre must evolve to survive. And Fuller knows it. "In England the bubble's already about to burst," he says, even as he oversees Pop Idol's second British series, a global rollout in China, Norway and other countries, and a set of new reality-TV shows planned with ABC and Fox. His solution is for the format to devour itself. "The clever thing," he says, "is to take it and parody it."
Fuller is a master of blending music, television and manufactured celebrity. In the mid-'90s, he managed the top pop confection known as the Spice Girls. In 1999 he launched the TV band S Club 7 (renamed S Club after a member left), a collection of British twentysomethings who have belted out 10 Top 10 pop hits in Britain and made four TV series. Next came a youth offshoot, S Club Juniors. Naturally, Fuller is planning to create the American Juniors--or the AJs--five U.S. kids ages 8 to 14 whom he will find, groom and turn into a band. The concept might be launched with a song-filled movie about kids at a performing-arts academy--"a cross between Fame and Grease," Fuller says.