Fawn, 22, set to take control of Raymond empire
Paul Raymond's 22-year-old granddaughter is being groomed to take over the £650 million porn and property empire he built up.
Fawn James, a student at St Andrews University, has been made a director of five of the key businesses at the heart of her late grandfather's kingdom.
Along with her 16-year-old sister India she is expected to inherit much of the wealth the 82-year-old left when he died earlier this month. The girls are the daughters of his daughter Debbie - whose death 16 years ago from a drink and drugs binge drove her heartbroken father to become a recluse.
Fawn's father is Duncan Mackay, keyboard player for the rock group 10cc, while India is the product of Debbie's marriage to businessman John James, who runs Raymond's Soho Estate Holdings company. If they do takeover the reins it would mean skipping a generation, including his soninlaw, his son Howard and his nephew Mark Quinn.
Raymond is said to have doted on his granddaughters and while poring over the group's accounts would be heard to say: "This is for the grandchildren."
He was thought to have been particularly delighted by the close physical resemblance between Fawn and his daughter. The girls were the centre of attention at Mr Raymond's funeral in south London two weeks ago. Before his death, he had also marked out his favour for Fawn by naming one of his companies after her middle name Ilona.
Howard Raymond said Fawn became the apple of her grandfather's eye when Debbie died. He said: "I just hope she doesn't turn into Paris Hilton."
Contemporaries at St Andrews, where she is studying social anthropology, have described her as "not just a dumb blonde".
One said: "It was ages before I even found she had any connections with Paul Raymond. She doesn't exactly go shouting about it."
The girls' family home is a large house in Surrey. India is still at school studying for her A-levels.
It is a far cry from the early life of their grandfather, who was born Geoffrey Anthony Quinn, the son of a Liverpool haulage contractor, in November 1925. He changed his name when he tried to break into showbusiness as a mind-reader on Clacton pier aged 22.
The possibility a young woman graduate could take over the reins of Soho's biggest landlord has raised intruiging questions about the future of the West End district.
Some have suggested she could lead a regeneration of an area which has long had a seedy reputation. The Raymond empire owns the freeholds to around 60 acres of Soho land. The changing leadership of the empire comes half a century after Mr Raymond first made his name when he opened the UK's first strip club - Raymond Revue bar in Soho in 1958.
