Bringing home the Bacon
Company promoter, Christopher 'Sell 'em' Selmes, twenty-two, stock and share man and head of the Drakes holding company, learned his trade from Mr Pat Matthews, who started by making reproduction antique furniture in a small way and built up the £50 million First National Finance Corpora- tion. Christopher Selmes fell out with Matthews, began on his own a year or so ago and quickly got an unfair reputation for haiiing given the shares of the £100 million Slater Walker Group a drubbing by heavy short selling. Slater's didn't blanch and their men are back taking commissions for giving Selmes advice over his deals.
Christopher Selmes is a lucky chap (a father yesterday) married to the exotic
daughter of Lajos Lederer, the Observer's man on mid-European affairs. The left-wing family he has joined has taken his mind, for the moment, from hard work in the City to the appreciation of art. His latest thrust is a Francis Bacon from Marlborough Fine Art. Characteristically Selmes found a bar- gain since the painting (one of Bacon's usual tortured Cardinals, apparently) was badly marked with what seemed to be thick soup stains which are being painstakingly removed by a restorer.
Bloomsbury pranksters say Selmes thought he had an Andy Warhol before the Francis Bacon was revealed by cleaning.
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