Carphones tycoon makes son, 17, leading man at opera

He’s amassed a fortune nudging £700million, owns a luxurious villa in Mustique and yet still finds time to chair not only the National Portrait Gallery but also the Royal Opera House.

But it appears that, at 55, David Ross, co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, is preparing to share the burdens of office with the next generation.

He has, I can disclose, just appointed his son, Carl, to be the patron of Nevill Holt Opera, the opera house which Ross established at his Leicestershire estate in 2013.

such an arrangement might not seem unusual for any self-made man intent on establishing a budding dynasty.

But the appointment represents a precocious advance for Carl — a lad of 17 who’s still in the sixth form at the same public school where his father befriended Charles Dunstone, his Carphone Warehouse co-founder.

Observers point out that it coincides with Ross’s recent appointment as the new chairman of the Royal Opera House.

‘David Ross has now gone to the Royal Opera House to raise money for opera, so who will be left to raise money for Nevill Holt?’ one of them muses.

‘A 17-year-old schoolboy with little, if any, experience.’

A new 400-seat auditorium was built at

Nevill Holt in 2018 with a loan of £6.5 million from the David Ross Foundation. Nevill Holt Opera has still to pay back all the money and has secured terms to extend a loan repayment schedule over 50 years, by which time Carl will be 67.

But Ross, who earlier this year ‘facilitated’ the holiday which the Prime Minister and Carrie symonds enjoyed in Mustique, is unlikely to be perturbed by criticism.

His son is by his relationship with shelley Ross, a pole-dancer who happened to share his surname but whom he never married.

Nevill Holt Opera describes Carl as ‘an excellent musician’, and says that he has been ‘highly involved’ with its work since it began.

Nicholas Chalmers, its artistic director, adds that Carl has ‘demonstrated his musicianship and talent on the Nevill Holt Opera stage on many occasions’, singing in La Bohème and Carmen, as well as performing as a pianist at various Nevill Holt events.