David Ross floats between business, the gossip columns and politics. The
co-founder of Carphone Warehouse is as happy canvassing for the Tory party
in Grimsby as he is going to the opera in Covent Garden with a model. In
London he attends dinner parties with David and Samantha Cameron. In
Leicestershire, where he owns a 13th-century stately home, Nevill Holt, he
shoots grouse with the likes of Gary Lineker and Sir Richard Branson.
He has partied in Mustique with Sir Mick Jagger and Prince William but also
spends hours poring over the attendance records at the state school that he
sponsors. His gold Land Rover was once used by Sir Ranulph Fiennes for an
Arctic expedition, and he is also fascinated by high-speed railways.
A sports obsessive who has on his office wall a photograph of himself with
Lawrence Dallaglio, the former England rugby union captain, he is also a
trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. His former partners include the
model Saffron Aldridge and Shelley Ross, a ballerina who once worked as a
pole dancer, with whom he has a six-year-old son. He celebrated his 40th
birthday with a champagne party, themed on the Carry On films.
Then, last year, Mr Ross became one of the first famous victims of the credit
crunch. He resigned as a director of Carphone Warehouse — which he had set
up with an old school friend, Charles Dunstone, 20 years ago — after he used
his shares in the company to support a personal loan to buy property and
failed to disclose this to the board. This was technically against the
rules, although the Financial Services Authority subsequently admitted that
the position was unclear and that it would take no action against Mr Ross or
others who had made the same mistake.
Now he has become the business brains behind the Conservatives’ plans to
develop a new generation of free schools. He has hosted a series of dinners
for potential sponsors at his home in Chelsea and aims to match well-off
entrepreneurs with parents’ groups and charities who want to set up schools.
“We can do education very well in this country — in the best schools, it’s
world class,” he says. “But there is this divide between state schools and
private ones. To bridge that we need as many schools as possible to be set
free.”
He has been tipped by several shadow cabinet ministers to be given a peerage
if the Tories win power at the next general election. Like the other Tory
David, he says that he wants everyone to have the opportunities that he had
as a child. Born into a wealthy Grimsby fishing family, he was sent away to
private boarding school at the age of 8 and went on to public school at
Uppingham.
He dates his business drive from his father’s decision to send him for work
experience on an Algerian building site when he was 16. He hated it and
decided: “I had to be able to control my own destiny.” This desire for
independence led him to walk out of a junior accounting job to help his
friend to sell mobile phones from a basement. They called the company
Carphone Warehouse.
Two years ago he used his fortune to help to set up Havelock Academy on the
site of a failing comprehensive school at Grimsby and hopes that this will
become the blueprint for other schools around the country.
So far the results are impressive. The percentage of children getting five
GCSEs, grades A to C, has gone up from 23 to 41 and the school has risen
from ninth to fourth in the local league table. “It’s much more disciplined
and aspirational. They all wear a uniform now and they get a blazer if they
earn house points. We have a school council, houses, homework and
prize-giving. It’s traditional rather than old-fashioned. They certainly
can’t have mobile phones in the classroom.”
The school is linked to Uppingham, which he still describes as his educational
“reference point”. He says: “We want to give the Grimsby children everything
that independent schools do. We only have adequate playing fields but we
have managed to use the allotments next door for an inter-house gardening
competition. We have a combined cadet force corps. We’re thinking of cricket
and rugby and we’d love to do sailing.”
When Havelock was set up, a head was brought in from the private sector but
most teachers from the old school have stayed. “We just needed to set the
teachers free to do what most of them still love.”
Instead of A levels, the school offers the International Baccalaureate. “We
are independent and want independence in our curriculum. It meant we could
give the teachers a chance to change how they teach and I am looking forward
to our first Oxbridge candidates.” He wants to open a primary school next
door. “If they have fallen behind by 11 it is hard to catch up.”
Extra-curricular activities are as important as lessons. “Children who come
out of independent schools have the tools to be successful because they have
social self-confidence. A boy from Eton can stand up and give a speech
because he has been to debating society,” he says. “We should do that in the
state system.
“Education is not something that happens from 8.30 to 2.30 with five lessons
and a lunch break — we need theatre trips, Outward Bound Adventures, Duke of
Edinburgh awards, ballet, music — things middle-class children get both at
home and at private school.”
He would like to see more boarding pupils in state schools. “It can enable
kids to get opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise get, particularly children
with care issues. In my original Havelock plan the idea was to have
boarding.”
It was Lord Adonis, the former schools minister and now the Transport
Secretary, who persuaded Mr Ross to pour more than £2 million into Havelock
and there are plans for another school.
He thinks that business leaders like him are ideally suited to the task of
improving schools. “You become an entrepreneur by challenging the
traditional view and that’s what you do in this environment too. The key
thing is to change the way the school thinks about itself, not just to
accept it’s in a difficult part of town.”
It should, he believes, be made much easier for fee-paying independent schools
such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester to sponsor academies and free schools.
“The way the Charities Commission sets the public benefit test makes it very
hard. Private schools are told to offer bursaries at their own
establishments rather than help other schools.
“If a school wants to pass the public benefit test it has to cherry-pick one
or two candidates out of the state system and this isn’t going to help stop
the social apartheid. Eton told me they could supply music and supporting
facilities to pretty much all of Slough but they would get nothing from the
public benefit test for doing that.”
The Tory party has said that providers will be non-profit making but Mr Ross
sees nothing wrong with letting those who run the new state schools make
money. “Let’s not kid ourselves: the reality is that there are already
people making a profit out of education — there are sub-contractors,whether
they are cleaners or caterers, who make money. I don’t aspire to make a
profit, but if there are others who will provide a great education, then I
think that’s fine.”
He has worked closely with Lord Adonis, who devised the city academies
programme for Tony Blair, but has been a Conservative donor for years. “I
have always voted Tory, I fundamentally believe in small government and I
want to level up, not down. It’s my social conscience that makes me Tory.
Successful people need to give something back.”
It has, he admits, been a difficult year, even though he says that he has been
exonerated — others might say rehabilitated — over his financial affairs. “I
was made a bit of a scapegoat. Lots of people were doing the same. But the
media furore was around me. It wasn’t fun, but then Bernie Madoff came out
of the closet and everyone realised they had found a real criminal.”
Perhaps he drew attention because of his personal life. “I might have been
judged for having pretty girls,” he says. “I come from Grimsby — I don’t think
of myself as flamboyant. I’m pretty normal but I have gone on yachts, I do
go on holiday, I enjoy being with my friends on their boats.”
Certainly it is difficult to fit him into a conventional box. “I’m not a
pinstriped businessman, but nor am I a landed gentry shooting type or a
celebrity type,” he says. “I spent ten years buried in a basement in the
Marylebone Road, going through Carphone Warehouse accounts. It wasn’t all
fun.
“I was just fortunate enough through incredibly hard work in my twenties to
enjoy some of the nicer things in life in my forties.”
CURRICULUM VITAE
Born 1965 in Grimsby
Family The grandson of Carl Ross, who created one of Britain’s largest
commercial fishing groups. His father, John, ran Cosalt, Grimsby’s only
quoted public limited company. Ross has a six-year-old son
Education Uppingham School, the University of Nottingham
Career Joined Arthur Andersen and became a chartered accountant. Co-founded
Carphone Warehouse with his friend Charles Dunstone from a flat in
Marylebone Road, London. At peak valuation, Ross was one of the 100 richest
people in Britain with an estimated personal wealth of £873 million. Last
year he became a non-executive director
Home He now lives at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, the site of his old
prep school
QUICK FIRE
Penélope Cruz or Scarlett Johansson? I can’t possibly make that
decision
The Economist or GQ magazine? The Economist
Pheasant shooting or art galleries? Art galleries
Prince William or Prince Charles? Prince William
Guacamole or mushy peas? Mushy peas. I’m from Grimsby
Landed gentry or entrepreneur? Entrepreneur
Heir to Blair or heir to Thatcher? Thatcher’s child
Boujis or The Beefsteak? The RAC club
Eurosceptic or Eurotrash?
Neither
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