From The Sunday Times
June 6, 2010
Just don’t ask me about the escort girl
The Carphone Warehouse mogul David Ross is wholly focused and his new academy schools
Camilla Long
I think I must be in the wrong boardroom or something because there’s a topless blonde on an antique sofa in this one and for once David Ross, the former Carphone Warehouse entrepreneur, is nowhere to be seen.
So I go next door, where there’s an even bigger boardroom and sure enough five minutes later Ross appears, a badger-like blond in a thick, white, millionaire’s shirt. He is slightly late because there’s been a muddle with his boy Carl’s school blazer. Ross is separated from Carl’s mother Shelley, a former ballerina who slid into pole dancing, “but I don’t think we need to discuss that in this interview,” he says in his tycoon’s foghorn, something that he says a lot during our 60 minutes together. To the extent, in fact, that when I ask him what he was like at school, he hilariously responds: “Dangerous to speculate.”
Really? I say. Not that dangerous, surely — unless he was a schoolboy serial killer — and besides, when it comes to Ross, Tory donor, schools champ and one of David Cameron’s closest associates, there are far more controversial issues to discuss. His love of parties, for a start, the champagne-soaked bash he gave for his 40th. His toys — the flash gold Land Rover and the chopper he lent Dave.
And what about the grade I-listed manshun in Leicestershire, his £22m Yorkshire shoot, or the villa on Mustique? Then there’s the luscious laydeez he has dated, the models, the PR girls, the, er, models, not to mention the time he and his 23-year-old girlfriend got caught in a compromising position with a 30-year-old Lithuanian escort girl.
No, we won’t be discussing any of that because what Ross is here to talk about is his new programme for schools and the Malcolm Arnold academy that he’s opening in Northamptonshire . . .
Actually, I’m sorry. Stop right there, Rossamondo. We have to discuss the escort. Quite aside from anything else, what really happened after a Christmas party one night last year is still rather a mystery, but what we do know is that at 5am the police were called to Ross’s London house by a distressed Lithuanian escort named Sniezana Kobeniak. Working under the undeniably classy name of Karina Storm, she later told newspapers she had been summoned by a woman to turn up at the house but, when she showed, she was not what was expected and was told to leave without payment.
A scuffle ensued, in which her coat was torn, and then the police were called. Ross was subsequently questioned over her alleged assault; ultimately Kobeniak retracted her claims and the charges were dropped. Nevertheless, it was a scandal. Not only because of Ross’s standing as, until recently, one of the richest men in the country — in 2008 he was worth £873m — but because he had been with Cameron, a man he has cautiously courted for several years, only a few hours earlier. Just months before the election, the timing was disastrous.
So what happened? “Turn the tape off,” barks Ross. Before saying that he can’t comment because of legal proceedings he is considering.
Fine, I say, but what on earth are the parents in Northamptonshire, who might send their children to his academy, going to make of all of this? “I don’t think they’ll buy into all the tittle-tattle,” he says, so I ask him how he feels as a role model to the pupils.
“To the extent that I could be a positive role model,” says Ross, who grew up in Grimsby, the location of his Havelock academy, “I would like them to think that someone from Grimsby can go on and do special things. That, even if you’re born in Grimsby, opportunities are available to you. Aim high, aim for a good university.”
Still, for Ross the drama has come as rather a blow, not least because of all the work he’s been putting into the schools. He has been involved with them for several years after “Andrew Adonis initially got me started”, he explains, referring to the education guru Tony Blair asked to oversee the academies scheme, in which rich sponsors donated £2m to a failing state school in the hope of turning things around. The scheme was broadly ignored by Gordon Brown, but with the advent of the new education secretary Michael Gove, who wants even more academies to open up, Ross is set to get further involved.
He has already donated £2m to the Havelock academy and his second school, the Malcolm Arnold academy, formerly Unity college, will open in September. He eventually hopes to be involved with up to 10 of these academies, “chains of schools that have a geographical cluster, in the same way that Lord Harris has done in southeast London”, he says, referring to the carpet tycoon who has a collection of nine academies in and around Peckham. “I’d like to do mine in Northampton across to Grimsby.”
Ten schools? That’s a massive commitment. Ross insists it’s simply an opportunity “to give a little bit back. Do things a little bit differently and change their life chances”.
He is obviously serious about it, beetling up to Havelock “twice a term”, and keeping a close eye on the school’s statistics, but when I ask if he’d accept a peerage for his efforts, he dodges the question, saying: “That’s not what’s being discussed today.” Come on. You’re happy to be snapped with Sam and Cam at parties. “I’m hugely supportive of Cameron, of course,” he says. “He’s done something very difficult and I respect that, but I don’t see myself as a political figure.”
Neither is he a society one, apparently, although that hasn’t stopped him partying with Prince William on holiday in Mustique, or featuring in Tatler this month as a “house to marry now”. Rather snottily labelled “upwardly mobile”, “Rosso” is pictured next to Nevill Holt, his huge 13th-century house, “an über-pad for his weekend house parties”.
Is he really the most eligible bachelor in Britain, I gasp. He laughs: “Haven’t seen it yet.” So just upwardly mobile? He shrugs: “Where anyone chooses to go on holiday is their decision. Every penny I have earned for myself. I was very lucky to be involved at an early age in the creation of a fantastic business, which enables me to do interesting things [such as] go on holiday in a nice place. I do occasionally go to Mustique.”
Indeed, whatever his attempts at socialising — he often sits silently at dinner parties before barking “let’s go clubbing” as a sign-off — and obnoxious taste in totty (he has been known to introduce squeezes as “my current girlfriend”), when it comes to work Ross is unquestionably dedicated. The barrow-boy act is a bit of a bluff, too: as the grandson of the man who founded Ross Frozen Foods, he was “lucky” to be sent to a boarding school, Uppingham in Rutland. It was a “fantastic school” that taught him to “be self-confident, have all-round skills, play sport, sing in a choir, those sorts of things”, as well as introducing him to his future business partner Charles Dunstone.
In 1989, after a degree in law at Nottingham, he and Dunstone invested £6,000 in some new devices called mobile phones. He spent most of the early 1990s in a London basement developing the business — which is now worth billions.
In recent years, however, things have got tougher. He split up with Shelley, whom he met at an airport but never married, and in 2006 was struck by a tragedy when his stepsister and her boyfriend, who lived on the estate of one of Ross’s houses, Brampton Ash in Northamptonshire, were murdered by her estranged husband, who then burnt down their house.
“It was clearly a terrible, terrible time for all of us,” says Ross. He has since sold the house but it “remains a terrible and difficult situation and I don’t want to talk about it”.
Then there was his resignation from Carphone Warehouse after an embarrassing kerfuffle over his shares, in which he took out a loan against his 20% stake in the company without telling the board. “The timing was unfortunate,” says Ross. And then, well, there was the escort girl.
Still, he refuses to look back, concentrating instead on the schools and his remaining businesses, rugby and collecting art. His Piccadilly headquarters is stuffed with modern work. The naked girl next door is a picture, of course, by Bob Carlos Clarke, the late erotic photographer. “But don’t write about it!” shouts Ross on the telephone later.
“You weren’t meant to see that! You went into a room you weren’t meant to be in! If you write about it, I’ll have to have all my meetings in the Wolseley ... We’re not here to discuss that!”
or am I just spreading unfounded rumours ??
