Everyone loves a winning loser and if there’s one man who fits that bill perfectly at the moment it’s last night’s Apprentice winner Tom Pellereau who, despite losing eight tasks during the 14 programme series, made it through to win the £250,000 prize.

The cash, which will be invested in his business by Lord Sugar, along with the considerable free publicity it will create, comes at a time when Pellereau had been facing a difficult period in his life, he says.

Before appearing on the show inventor Pellereau had already launched several successful products including an ergonomically-designed nail file and a range of baby goods. But he told reporters recently that, after his most recent business venture faced an uncertain future, he sat in his London flat and decided it was time to be on the show.

But we can reveal that Tom, who proposed to girlfriend and ‘fellow-geek’ Sarah Fawcus just three weeks before the final last night, remains a home boy.

Despite renting in London and being holed up these days more and more at Sarah’s flat in Camberwell Green, South London, Tom’s life is still strongly tethered to his family home back in the wilds of Hampshire between Winchester and Basingstoke in a small hamlet called Swarraton.

The inventor and businessman is still registered at his parent’s address to vote in Hampshire where his family have a detached country home with a swimming pool and large garden.

Tom’s mum and dad bought the house for £480,000 in 2002 but it’s now worth at least £1 million – so perhaps the couple might want to jump in with Lord Sugar and help him fund his now promising but young business.

Billions of people around the world waited in suspense in April to see what Kate Middleton would wear at the wedding of the decade but few realised that her Alexander McQueen dress had been prepared within one of London’s up-and-coming neighbourhoods.

For it was within Clerkenwell that ‘operation meringue’ took place – the plan, within a locked room at McQueen’s HQ on the corner of Clerkenwell Rd and St John St, to hide the dress from public gaze until the big day.

Many of those waving their Union Jacks may already know Clerkenwell, even if they hadn’t ever been there.  Because its narrow Victorian side streets have been the setting for several Hollywood films including The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Often eclipsed by its neighbours Hoxton and Dalston, this patch of East London has quietly established itself as edgy while still being ‘old England’ and has been called ‘The Mayfair of East London’ by leading local agent David Salvi.

But another measure of an area’s rise from poverty to gentrification is how many artisans reside locally and Clerkwenwell (pictured above) scores well – the strange haircuts, ill fitting clothes and battered cycles everywhere point to its 60-plus design studios and other arty employers.

Historically Clerkenwell’s buildings had been commercial but 20 years ago this began to change as more factories and warehouses were developed into private accommodation. Janet Street-Porter, the outspoken journalist, pioneered this and had the architect Piers Gough design her post-modernist house at Britton Street.

In the ten years that followed some 2,400 trendy apartments and ‘loft conversions’ have been built in the area, so it now bustles. Planning applications to convert buildings also rose from a couple each year to over fifty.

But the numbers hide a sea change in local culture. Out go the old pubs and derelict shops and in the stylish bars and restaurants which now give the area a ‘new Soho’ feel food-wise including Mark Hix’s Hix Oyster and Chop House, Fergus Henderson’s St John and John Torode’s Smiths which all manage to be fashionable as well as retaining the unassuming, earthy feel of the area.

Hotels chains have yet to bite the Clerkenwell apple with only a few notable names, partly because it’s off the tourist track, albeit that’s starting to change.

The area’s most famous champion is connected to food. Mark Sainsbury, instead of joining the family supermarket business, has moved to a converted Georgian stable in North Clerkenwell after spotting the area’s potential. He opened his fashionable Zetter Hotel (pictured above) six years ago following the success of his restaurant venture in Exmouth Market, Moro – which now has three cookbooks and a cult following.

• To read more about the area, get Alan Ainsworth’s fascinating book Clerkenwell: Change and Renewal which gives an in depth history of the area and describes how it has changed. It is well worth reading, not only for the pictures which capture Clerkenwell’s essence and its USP: the people, streets and architecture.

If you are trying to sell a prime house in London at the moment but can’t find a buyer then I’ve got a suggestion. Go to Singapore. 

That’s where estate agent Trevor Abrahamson of Glentree Estates went last week to sell West Heath Place (pictured, below) a development of apartments in North London starting at £800,000.

He had realised recently that there was an ‘unquenchable thirst’ among Singaporeans for London property, although he says the Malaysian buyers are also starting to arrive here too.

“In the minds of Asia’s super-rich London is fast eclipsing New York as the place to own a second home,” he says.

Abrahamson, who is a long-established London agent, also says that although the UK property market is skating on thin ice at the moment, the capital’s property market is the destination of choice for the world’s high ‘net worths’ these days, which perhaps explains why London’s prime neighbourhoods have avoided the worst of the recession to date.

“Asia is in a different and much better place economically at the moment and the immense wealth being generated there has created a mobile, wealthy class who view London both as the world’s most fashionable capital and a solid investment opportunity – particularly as the pound has been so weak of recent,” he says.

Our capital, apparently, has a varied but unusual mix of good restaurants; a rich culture; transparent laws and a tolerant society plus a high-profile fashion industry; companies at the forefront of technology; and a huge range of property  sizes, styles and ‘villages’.

 “There is also a colonial connection that helps here,” says Trevor. “Singaporeans believe our education system is the best and often they will either buy a property for their sons and daughters to use while studying here, or a second home in London for the same purpose.”

But it’s more than just fashion that is attracting Singaporeans to London. Trevor says that, like us, they are an instinctive property owning people and many of them see London as both a solid but also a fashionable place to invest in bricks and mortar.

But although Singaporeans are the latest wealthy foreigners to start buying property in the capital, it is the Chinese and Russians who have already arrived and Abrahamson says he’s had several Beijing billionaires looking for homes in London in the £30 to £40 million bracket.

“The Russians like it here because north London’s big houses remind them of Moscow’s suburban dachas and their favourite private airports aren’t far away,” says Abrahamson. “They like flouting their wealth whereas the Chinese are far more reticent and less open.”

But does all this excitement and wealth sell property? Abrahamson says he sold £3 million of property in Singapore with interest in another £3m. So the answer is evidently yes.

Entry intercoms, electric gates, immaculate lawns and clipped hedges – all of these usually point to a highly desired and wealthy street. But research released today has revealed which ones can claim to top the list of the UK’s most expensive.

The costliest is Wycombe Square (pictured), a ‘new’ square of 19  luxury Georgian townhouses and 48 apartments all snapped up by a raft of bankers and pop musicians back in 2005.

The square, which is set around a central garden, has regularly been in the newspapers as various high profile residents have bought in and out of the postcode, particularly when senior Barclays investment chief Bob Diamond purchased his house there for £10.5 million in 2005, only to sell it for £25 million in 2008. At the time Diamond had been hired by London mayor Boris Johnson to raise money for the capital’s deprived teenagers.

The average price for a home on the square, the research by Halifax reveals,  is a more modest £5.4 million, but that puts it at the top of the UK’s rich-list property pile, closely followed by exclusively London and South East roads. These include:

1. Wycombe Square, Kensington,London W8 – £5.4m

2. Ingram Avenue, Hampstead, London NW11 – £4.8m

3. Cottesmore Gardens, Kensington, London W8 – £4.2m

4. Mallord Street, Kensington, London SW3 – £3.9m

5. Stormont Road, Highgate, London, N64 – £3.37m

6. Brunswick Gardens, London, W8 – £3.08m

7. Bedford Gardens, Kensington, London, W8 – £2.9m

8. Sloane Gardens, Kensington, London, SW1 – £2.7m

9. Parkside, Wimbledon, London, SW19 – £2.68m

10 Paultons Square, Kensington, London, SW3 – £2.66m

Outside of the top ten only roads in Leatherhead, Virginia Water and Sevenoaks were in the next ten most expensive, and the dearest roads in the north and north west of England are still five times cheaper than their counterparts down south – particularly when compared to the London Borough of Kensington Chelsea.

“This borough has long had a global appeal, but the fall in the value of the pound has helped to attract foreign buyers over the past year despite the worldwide recession,” says Nitesh Patel of the Halifax.

We’re increasingly being told about the environmental impact buildings can have on the climate, not least from people like Prince Charles. So it may come as a surprise that the least eco-friendly building in London has been revealed as being good old Buckingham Palace.

The Queen’s des res scored 0 out of 10 in a survey of 170 buildings in London by renewable energy firm Navitron. They were exploring the energy efficiency of buildings in the capital city and many were found to be woefully inadequate. By using thermal imaging techniques, they were able to see how well insulated the buildings were – or were not – and whether heat was contained within the buildings or madly escaping.

The thermal imaging survey of Buckingham Palace revealed it to be a hotbed of activity. Rather than heat being contained within the Palace, it was shown to be pouring out through the building in every area possible – through the roof, the walls, through curtained windows and even through cracks.

As it was built in 1820 and contains over 600 rooms, it’s not surprising that the Palace is experiencing problems with energy efficiency. The Queen has, however, apparently set up an energy-saving committee to try and tackle the problems and reduce consumption.

But it wasn’t only the Queen’s residence that was problematic. It was only last month that the Government launched a new scheme aimed at helping households reduce their emissions by 50% by the year 2050, yet some of the key Government buildings in London, such as the Ministry of Defence, MI6 HQ, the Treasury and the Home Office, were all found to be major polluters.

The full list of top 12 non-green and leakiest buildings in London is as follows:

1. Buckingham Palace
2. DECC (Defra)
3. The Ministry of Defence
4. Horse Guards Barracks
5. The Shell Building
6. The Home Office
7. Houses of Parliament
8. The Treasury
9. Portcullis House
10. MI6 HQ
11. The Albert Hall
12. St James’ Palace

If you’d like to try and reduce energy emissions in your home and make it more eco-friendly, then some simple ways of making a difference include swapping single glazing (as in the palace) for double glazing, improving draught-proofing in your home, using energy-saving light bulbs and turning off lights when you’re not in a room. For more ideas, take a look at our guide to energy saving.

West Lodge, in Hyde Park

It’s not often that you get the chance to find a rental property in the heart of a city, yet surrounded by nature and wildlife. But that’s the case in the city of London, where a few unusual properties have recently come up for rent – located in some of the best loved Royal Parks.

As part of the Royal Parks’ Better Buildings Programme, seven lodges in various Royal Parks in London have been decorated and updated and are now being let to tenants. The idea is that letting the buildings out will be a better way of generating revenue and a far more effective use of the buildings. Plus, they make very unique homes to lucky renters.

The buildings all have a long history, which is fascinating in itself, and offer tenants the chance to live in the midst of some of the best green spaces in London, which are packed with nature and wildlife. But most are also located very close to the life of the city and benefit from sought-after parking spaces. Tenants also get the added advantage of having a gardening service thrown in too, as the Royal Park gardeners mow the lawns on a regular basis.

Blackheath Gate Lodge, in Greenwich Park

Two of the Royal Park homes that are currently still available are West Lodge, in Hyde Park, a striking neo-classical style pavilion lodge with one bedroom, located minutes from Knightsbridge and the Royal Albert Hall, and Blackheath Gate Lodge in Greenwich Park, a three-bedroom early Victorian house, which backs onto the deer enclosure. For city fans who are lovers of history and nature, you can’t get much better than this.