‘I’m absolutely not interested in why it can’t happen’

Charles Dunstone wants Carphone Warehouse to be the Tesco of telephony. ‘You grow your market share, provide the best service at the best price and keep investing the gains you make into the business to make prices even more competitive.’ It is a typical Dunstone statement: simple to say, hard to do. It is no coincidence that his chairman at Carphone is the former Tesco buying director John Gildersleeve, part of the team that helped Tesco overtake Sainsbury’s a decade ago. ‘Charles has a remarkable hunger to do the right thing for customers,’ says Gildersleeve, echoing the Tesco mantra. ‘He has not got a big ego that gets in the way, but he is absolutely obsessive.’

Such obsession means that the company Dunstone started from his flat in 1989 with £6,000 already sells one in five mobile phones in Britain, and is the brand trusted by customers to sort out the best mobile phone for them.