David Ross is never far from the news, whether he is discussing the much-criticised budget for the 2012 Olympic games, or being pictured in the tabloids with glamorous partners such as ex-pole dancer Shelley Ross, by whom he has a son.
This morning he hit the headlines in his capacity as deputy chairman of Carphone Warehouse Group, when he admitted that he had used a large slice of his personal holding in the company to guarantee personal loans.
Ross is one of the co-founders of the mobile phone retailer. A qualified chartered accountant by trade, he set up the company in 1989 with his old school friend Charles Dunstone. What followed was two decades of whirlwind growth, both organic and via acquisition, and membership on several boards such as National Express, Trinity Mirror, Frontiers Capital and the English Sports Council.
It took four years to grow Carphone from the first store to 20. Now the company opens one every working day across 11 markets including the US and sells more than 13m phones a year. Revenues in that first year were £1.2m. Last year Carphone Warehouse made nearly £4bn.
While co-founder Dunstone had identified the market, and initially mooted the idea, Ross later became instrumental in taking Carphone Warehouse outside the UK. He helped facilitate the company's IPO in July 2000 and was responsible for developing the company in Europe. Tabloid interest at the time also focused on the executive's love life, as he began a relationship with Ali Cockayne, a former partner of rugby star Will Carling.
He also helped consolidate a series of major acquisitions, including the high-profile Midlands-based electrical firm Tandy, giving his company 270 stores across the UK to operate from. Carphone Warehouse was starting to expand both in terms of products and geographies. With the launch of TalkTalk in 2003, the company threw down the gauntlet to BT in the landline and broadband space.
It went on a buying spree, picking up Onetel, Tele2 and AOL to give itself scale, the former giving them call-centre presence in India for the first time. In the middle of all this, he found time to help out his friend Gary Lineker, joining the football star-led consortium attempting to save Leicester City football club from its financial difficulties.
In 2004, Ross was made chairman of the board of National Express, where he has holdings, and non-executive director of Trinity Mirror the same year. His hasn't been shy of involving himself in politics either – he is a Tory supporter and donor, and serves as a member of the Home Office audit committee. He is also a trustee at the National Art Gallery.
Ross, one of Britain's most eligible bachelors, served these roles faithfully while still finding time to party three nights a week, make the celeb pages of the tabloids, and recuperate on Sunday by going game shooting with the likes of Sir Richard Branson and Gary Lineker in his sprawling estates - Nevill Holt in Leicestershire and Brampton Ash in Northamptonshire.
More recently, he hit the headlines under more tragic circumstances. Last month, he announced he was selling his £7m-plus estate in Brampton Ash, Northamptonshire, after the death at that property of his stepsister, Fiona Marshall, at the hands of her estranged husband Alex Marshall.
Marshall had stabbed Fiona and her boyfriend Richard Flippance and set the house on fire in an attempt to destroy the evidence.
But Ross still owns a Grade I-listed mansion which includes 300 acres of woodland, 1,000 acres of arable land and 100 acres of pasture.