Simon Cowell will let One Direction go solo - as long as they don't split up.

The 55-year-old music mogul - who put the group together on 'The X Factor' in 2010 - is happy for Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson to work on other projects, as long as it is just ''on the side'' and doesn't affect their main job as part of the chart-topping boy band.

Speaking at last night's (25.02.15) BRIT Awards with MasterCard, he told the Daily Mirror newspaper: ''You can't knock what One Direction are doing. They're making great records and I think that's why they're still so popular.

''I hear speculation all the time that they're going solo. My advice is they should stay together but still do things they want as a little bit on the side.''

Earlier in the evening, Simon was on hand to collect the 'Steal My Girl' hitmaker's award for British Artist Video of the Year for 'You and I', after touring commitments meant the band were currently in Japan.

Accepting the gong, he said: ''This is so exciting. But Sam [Smith] you can't win everything tonight.

''The boys are in Japan and they kind of made up this speech incase they did win and they wanted to, first of all, say hello to everybody. They want to thank their fans for voting, because they do have the best fans in the world...

''I'm incredibly excited and I want to officially say thank you to the boys for being just amazing. It's a great video; I'm absolutely thrilled. Thank you everyone for voting.''