Meet the new girl helping tycoon David Ross through his share scandal - she's only 22!

By Laura Collins, Mail on Sunday Feature Writer
Updated: 17:01 EDT, 13 December 2008

Young: Ross's new girlfriend Emma Pilkington

This is the attractive 22-year-old student giving comfort to troubled Carphone Warehouse founder David Ross following the financial scandal that threatens to cost him everything.

The dashing 42-year-old has flown out to his Mustique villa this weekend with girlfriend Emma Douglas Pilkington as his business dealings face increasing scrutiny.

But Emma’s mother Celia sprang to his defence, insisting: ‘He’s not a conniving scoundrel, he’s a lovely man.

‘David is always generous and helpful,’ she said. ‘This whole business has affected him very badly. Emma is his girlfriend and is trying to pick up the pieces. My poor daughter is trying to help him through this.

‘Nobody understands the big fuss. He’s not a greedy banker who has plunged us into recession. He’s a businessman who made a mistake – a mistake that one of our powerful and respected barrister friends described as a minor misdemeanour.’

Last Monday, the tycoon resigned from the board of Carphone Warehouse after using his £130million stake in the company to guarantee personal loans. He admitted doing the same with his shareholdings at four other companies where he was a director, and is now waiting to find out if he will be investigated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

Ross has not been contacted by the FSA, and yesterday James Palmer, a lawyer involved in drafting the 2005 rules which Ross broke by not telling fellow board members about the loans, called his resignation ‘a tragedy’ and his vilification ‘an outrage’.

Ross most fears losing his social standing, according to one friend. He has already quit as a 2012 Olympics adviser and Tory leader David Cameron is under pressure to cut his links to the businessman who has given more than £140,000 of support to the Conservatives. The friend said: ‘David loves being feted by Cameron. He loves politics with a passion.’

Art and design student Emma is the latest attractive girl to fall for the tycoon. Previous girlfriends have included Will Carling’s ex Ali Cockayne, model Saffron Aldridge and former pole-dancer Shelley Ross, by whom he has a five-year-old son.

One friend said: ‘David can be incredibly charming but he can be difficult, too. He has a knack of making the women he’s with feel desperately insecure, jokingly introducing them as, “My current girlfriend...” and so on. He goes through relationships like a knife through butter.’

Tycoon David Ross's girlfriend is 20 years his junior

It is understood Ross met Emma at a shooting party in Yorkshire earlier this year. As well as homes in Chelsea and Switzerland, Grimsby-born Ross owns the 700-acre Nevill Holt estate in Leicestershire and is said to love the idea of being a country gent; hunting, shooting and fishing.

It is a world in which Emma is at home. She is the eldest daughter of wealthy investment adviser Nigel Pilkington and granddaughter of a former Inland Revenue commissioner. The family home is a magnificent 18th Century country house in Newbury, Berkshire, and they own a smart flat in South West London.

‘She’s not fazed by David’s wealth and is never likely to be,’ said one friend. ‘It’s her world as much as his.

‘She is different from his previous women, not least because of her  youth. She’s a very well-heeled, well-bred girl. She’s pukka. She has the confidence of youth and she’s very pretty and not clingy and insecure.’