- This eerily familiar face is pictured on the last day of the term at Dover College
With a disdainful scowl and a scathing stare, it is the eerily familiar face of a boy destined to become known on television as ‘Mr Nasty’.
Here is 16-year-old schoolboy Simon Cowell, taken just weeks before dropping out of the private boarding school he despised.
The Mail on Sunday has unearthed a never-before-seen school photo of the X Factor creator from his days at Dover College in Kent.
Photographed in 1975, on the last day of school, the young Cowell is seen with long, side-swept hair that almost covers his signature scowl as he poses for the photo in the back row next to his fellow boarding students at the private school.
Cowell, now 64, left Dover College after completing two O-levels, the equivalent of GCSEs, and said last year he ‘hated’ school, adding: ‘I got kicked out of a lot of schools. I got dropped a year because I was so bad and I was in the same class as my younger brother and it was chaos.”
The Mail on Sunday has unearthed this photo of Simon Cowell from his time at Dover College in Kent
A former classmate, who was two years older than Cowell, told the MoS: ‘I don’t think he liked school very much, but it was quite a strict school and it was the 1970s so everyone started to rebel against the fact that he had to be part of the school. from such a strict boarding school.’
His former assistant housemaster Lorenzo Smerillo previously said: ‘Simon was a very unhappy, nicotine-addicted, skinny, scruffy, disheveled, pimpled teenager – much like most boys at any school.
‘I thought he was funny in a quirky way. Often he had some joke on the tip of his tongue. He was admired by some boys after he left school with one or two degrees because he got a job as a post boy at some London record company.’
Cowell left Dover College with two O-levels and said last year he ‘hated’ school
Cowell started working at his father’s record label EMI before being promoted to talent scout.
He went on to create some of television’s most successful talent shows, including The X Factor, Pop Idol, America and Britain’s Got Talent. For a time, he was known as a hard man to please, and he often criticized wannabe stars with scathing criticism.
But he has now mellowed in later years after settling down with socialite Laura Silverman, 46, and enjoys spending time with their ten-year-old son Eric.