It's fortune rather than fame for X-factor Simon's brother

The X-Factor's Simon Cowell has a moderately successful younger brother in the property industry. Nicholas Cowell made a guest appearance in last week's Estates Gazette to tell the world that he has a very large (but unspecified) amount of money to spend on real estate in London.

Nicholas, 46, manages the property held in his 48-year-old brother's £112 million fortune. But this is no sinecure for the younger Cowell. In the property industry since his brother was a record-plugger for EMI in the late Seventies, he started work for estate agent Garrard Smith & Partners at the age of 17.

Cowell and business partner Adrian Levy borrowed £30,000 in 1983 to buy the company from David (now Sir David) Garrard. Cowell is the good cop of the pair, expensively groomed and charming. Levy is more the bruiser - perhaps the Simon Cowell of the double act.

The pair later changed the name of the business to the Estate Office and continued to act as property agents in north and west London before being hit by the early Nineties crash. They survived by giving paid advice to banks and receivers - and starting to buy property.

Since, then Cowell and Levy have entered into a series of joint ventures to buy and sell property with partners that have included the billionaire Pears family and celebrity property investment company aAim. These deals have quietly secured their fortunes.

Now Cowell wants the world to know that he has refinanced his portfolio (of unspecified size) with HSBC, and has those unspecified millions to buy anything from a single property for £500,000 to £80 million portfolios. Anyone fancy doing a pitch?