Theo Paphitis, an entrepreneur star of Dragons’ Den on BBC Two, has agreed to serve on a Conservative party task force on social mobility led by David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary.

Mr Paphitis, 48, who started his working life as an assistant tea boy before making a fortune with ladies’ lingerie, is an obvious — if eye-catching — choice for the group, which meets for the first time next week.

The man who turned around such stricken brands as La Senza and Millwall FC must now get to grips with a troubled venture of a different kind. Mr Davis, who was brought up in a single-parent family in a council house, first announced that he was to champion opportunities for the least well-off in December 2006. But the row about grammar schools and the Etonian schooling of David Cameron made the issue politically sensitive.

The task force risks reopening internal divisions over whether to do more to promote selective education. However, the new Tory “Dragon” sets little store by official schooling. In an interview on overcoming his dyslexia Mr Paphitis, who is worth an estimated £125 million, said that he had left school at 16, with three O levels. “You don’t need a degree to take on the world. I don’t give a monkey’s if my children are the bottom of the class because at the end of the day I know how hard-working they are.”

Other members of the task force include Sir Anwar Pervez, the Bestway Group magnate, Shaun Bailey, a youth worker, and Greg Clark, MP. They will develop policy on education, particularly vocational training, removing barriers to setting up businesses and extending home-ownership. Senior Conservatives have expressed nervousness about the attempt to co-ordinate policy in these areas.

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