Cowell reportedly signs LA house over to ex
Simon Cowell is giving his ex-fiancee Mezhgan Hussainy a £5 million gift following the end of their stormy relationship, according to reports. The 52-year-old X Factor supremo split with the make-up artist, ending their wedding plans, after a series of rows. Now journalist Tom Bower says in a new unauthorised biography, serialised by The Sun, that Simon promised to transfer ownership of his £5 million Beverly Hills house to Mezhgan, for being a 'hopeless boyfriend'. Simon - who it was claimed at the weekend slept with former X Factor judge Dannii Minogue - had been engaged to Mezhgan since early 2010. "I put her in the public eye and attracted a lot of attention to her. I had to be sensitive about her position and I didn't want to hurt her family, with whom I had become very close," Simon is reported to have said about her. Bower spent a year interviewing friends and colleagues of Simon for his book, Sweet Revenge, as well as Simon himself. The media mogul reportedly described the engagement to Mezhgan - whom he has known since 2002 - as 'a big mistake'. Meanwhile, Dannii is said to be unhappy about the claims of an affair being chronicled in the book. The 40-year-old singer recently split from her rugby player partner Kris Smith, with whom she has a 21-month-old son. The publication of the book about Simon - on April 21 - comes as his ITV1 show Britain's Got Talent continues to struggle against BBC One rival The Voice. When the two shows clashed on Saturday night, The Voice had twice as many viewers as BGT. The BBC show also had a bigger average audience than Cowell's show for a second week running.
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.