£650m phone tycoon lands bail- out for opera charity

FeW can match the Midas touch of David Ross, co-founder of Carphone Warehouse who’s amassed a personal fortune of £650 million. His talent for attracting money has not deserted him for i can disclose that nevill Holt opera — which Ross founded and funded at his leicestershire estate — has just been awarded a £100,000 grant by the Arts Council.

tory party donor Ross, 55, recently appointed his own 17- year- old schoolboy son, Carl, as nevill Holt’s patron, as i revealed last month. the windfall comes from the Culture Recovery Fund — a stash of taxpayers’ money that the Arts Council is distributing to organisations which have made appeals for financial assistance to help them weather the pandemic.

A new 400- seat auditorium was built at nevill Holt in 2018 with a loan of £6.5 million from the David Ross Foundation.

Ross is also a close chum of Boris Johnson, whose new Year holiday to Mustique with fiancée Carrie symonds he facilitated.

‘nevill Holt opera is an independent charity,’ says a spokesman for nevill Holt. ‘this grant will enable it to continue its work with thousands of young people across the Midlands and beyond, and to support and entertain our communities and audiences. We are grateful for this support, and committed to using it to continue the positive impact for which nevill Holt opera is known.’

Ross was made chairman of the Royal opera House this summer. now that nevill Holt has been bolstered by taxpayers’ cash, perhaps he will be moved to make the winning bid for David Hockney’s portrait of sir David Webster — Ross’s predecessor as chairman — which the RoH is reluctantly putting up for auction at Christie’s next week.

the portrait is expected to fetch up to £ 18 million for the RoH, which has been starved of income due to lockdown.