Life
He was born Nicholas Marcel Hoogstraten in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, the working-class son of a shipping agent. His mother was of German and English heritage, his father was of Dutch and French heritage. He was educated at a local Jesuit school, but is also known to have attended Blessed Robert Southwell Catholic School in Goring-by-Sea, now known as Chatsmore Catholic High School. He left school in 1962 (aged 17) and joined the merchant navy for a year. He began his property business in the Bahamas with an initial investment of £1,000 realised from the sale of his stamp collection.
He subsequently returned to Great Britain later in the 1960s with purchases in London and Brighton & Hove. By 1968 (aged 23) he was Britain's youngest millionaire with a portfolio of over 300 properties, but the same year he began serving a four-year sentence in prison for paying a gang to throw a grenade into the house of Rev Braunstein, a Jewish leader whose eldest son owed him £3,000 (adjusted for inflation the figure would be closer to £100,000 as "you could buy a house for that much"). Of the incident he has said: "It seems a bit distasteful to me now," he says, "but back then when I was young... these weren't anarchists, they were businessmen, respectable people."
He was also jailed on eight counts of handling stolen goods, and in 1972 was given a further 15 months for bribing prison officers to smuggle him luxuries. “I ran Wormwood Scrubs when I was in there,” he has said.
By 1980 (aged 35) he owned over 2,000 properties. He later sold the majority of his housing, investing in other fields outside Britain, chiefly mining and farming interests in Nigeria and later Zimbabwe.
He is frequently interviewed in the Courtlands Hotel which he has "close connections with", but which is legally owned by his children.
He was fined £1,500 in 2001 for contempt of court after telling the opposing counsel: "You dirty bastard... in due course, you are going to have it."
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