Recognise this familiar scowl? Television star pictured aged 16 in 1975 just weeks before leaving school – but can you guess who it is?

With a disdainful scowl and a withering glare, 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 he dropped out of the private boarding school which he despised.

The Mail on Sunday has unearthed a never-before-seen school photograph of the X Factor creator from his time at Dover College in Kent.

Taken in 1975 on the last day of term, the young Cowell can be seen with long, side-swept hair almost covering his trademark frown as he poses for the picture in the back row alongside his fellow boarding house pupils at the private school.

Cowell, now 64, left Dover College after getting two O-levels, the equivalent of GCSEs, and last year said that he ‘hated’ school, adding: ‘I was thrown out of a lot of schools. I was dropped a year because I was so bad and I was in the same class as my younger brother and that was chaos.’

One former schoolmate, who was two years Cowell’s senior, told the MoS: ‘I don’t think he liked school very much, but it was quite a strict school and it was the 70s so everyone was starting to rebel against having to be part of such a strict boarding school.’

His former assistant housemaster Lorenzo Smerillo previously said: ‘Simon was a very unhappy, nicotine-addicted, skinny, scruffy, dishevelled, pimply teen – rather like most boys at any school.

‘I found him amusing in a quirky way. He quite often had some wisecrack or other on the tip of his tongue. He was admired by some of the boys after he left school with his O-level or two because he got a job as a mail boy at some London record company.’

Cowell left Dover College with two O-levels and mentioned last year that he ‘hated’ school

Cowell started working at his father’s record label EMI before being promoted to a talent scout.

He went on to create some of the television’s most successful talent competitions 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 often criticised wannabe stars with withering put-downs. 

But now he has softened in later years after he settled down with socialite Laura Silverman, 46, and enjoys spending time with their ten-year-old son Eric.