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American Idol producer to run Paso Robles Half-Marathon 

"American Idol" producer Simon Lythgoe and his partner Alecia Davis of "Extra."

“American Idol” producer Simon Lythgoe and his partner Alecia Davis of “Extra.”

Villa San Juliette’s runner will donate proceeds to breast cancer charity

–Simon Lythgoe is a British expatriate who divides much of his time between Los Angeles and Paso Robles, where his family owns the Villa San Juliette Winery. But that’s only one of Lythgoe’s hats. At his day job he’s a producer on American Idol, and takes credit for the discovery of such celebrities as Carrie Underwood, Jordan Sparks and many others. American Idol takes him all over the country, to all 50 states, but the job is grueling. A recent midlife crisis prompted Lythgoe to re-examine his priorities.

“I was overworked, overweight, not exercising and honestly, I wasn’t eating right,” says Lythgoe, father of three. “I was doing a bit of soul-searching when the L.A. Marathon happened to pass by my home in West Hollywood.”

Lythgoe called his best friend in London, Dominic Cain, a health and fitness freak, asking for advice. Cain recommended he take up running, but pace himself using Couch to 5K, a running app that gets you to walk, run and stay alert. “I hadn’t done any exercise since I was at boarding school in Essex,” Lythgoe says. “I just never enjoyed it. Couch to 5K changed my life, because all you do is what the app tells you to do. It starts off very easily. You jog for a minute, you walk for three minutes and you do that for half an hour. And the next day it changes the ratios.”

Now, Lythgoe reports, “I love running.” He runs every other day and manages to run up to 10 miles at a go. He has committed himself to running Paso Robles’ 7th Annual Harvest Half-Marathon on October 30—a 13.1-mile jaunt that will help him raise funds for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. It will also prepare him to run in the L.A. Marathon in March.

From the UK to Australia to American citizen

Lythgoe wasn’t always a couch potato. Both of his parents, including Nigel Lythgoe of American Idol, were dancers, and he had ambition to follow in their footsteps when he was young. “Actually,” he says, “I was always discouraged from being a dancer. My parents met as dancers but told me your career is over by the time you’re 30. What happened was my dad transformed from being a dancer-choreographer to a television director, and then a producer. So I was already working in the TV business when I was 16 years old.”

american idol-simon lythgoe

Running at Villa San Juliette. Photo provided by Alecia Davis.

Lythgoe then ventured off to Australia, where he first worked for a New Zealand winery, exploring his passion for viniculture. He then landed a job on the Australian show Pop Stars, which was gaining popularity rapidly. This was back in the ‘90s. “Australians, everyone, stopped work to watch Pop Stars and it trended. It was the birth of reality television,” he says. “I sent VHS tapes of the show to my dad, he bought the rights and made it in the UK. He was a judge on the show. Pop Stars morphed into Pop Idol and it turned into American Idol and that’s how I ended up in the United States in 2002.”

After more than a decade working in America, Lythgoe says he felt it was time he become an American citizen. “This is my home and I thought I want to take responsibility for the government that’s going to rule this country. I wanted to vote in the United States for the first time in my life.”

Lythgoe says this particular election season “is the best reality show I’ve ever seen,” but won’t say who he’s voting for. “But I do my due diligence. I spent days going through studying every proposition, making sure I get both sides of the argument best as I can, because ultimately it’s we the people.”

The new American says he loves American patriotism. “I think it’s part of American culture, how passionate Americans are for their freedoms, their rights. I think a lot of the world could learn from that.”

So how did the busy American Idol producer wind up being a part-time North County resident? His mom and dad were doing American Idol in San Francisco one year and decided they would drive back home to Los Angeles. En route the Lythgoes dallied along the Central Coast. “They came across this vineyard for sale, and my dad’s always wanted something that he could say was ours, because one thing about television, once you’ve made a TV show, it’s gone. My dad wanted to set down some roots, literally to set some roots in the ground and actually make sure that we had a family business to pass on, and that became Villa San Juliette.”

To get in shape for Paso’s Harvest Half-Marathon, Lythgoe gave up drinking wine for nearly a year to focus on his endurance training. His childhood chum Dominic Cain will fly over from London and join him in the race on Oct. 30. The two runners aim to raise more than $10,000 for breast cancer research.

Says Simon, “I love Paso, I love wine and the hills will make a good challenge.”

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About the author: News Staff

The news staff of the Paso Robles Daily News wrote or edited this story from local contributors and press releases. The news staff can be reached at info@pasoroblesdailynews.com.