Hi. Oh, yes.
Hello. Oh, my goodness.
Hello!
The shy schoolboy who became a global celebrity -
Sir Richard Branson is a very British bundle of contradictions.
The dyslexic who set up a student magazine.
The record-label founder who didn't listen to music.
The '60s hippie who became a multibillionaire.
Today he's got his own island,
and his brand has dozens of companies to its name,
from Virgin Atlantic
to Galactic.
But after five decades in business, reinventing whole industries,
Sir Richard Branson has been tested as never before,
both financially and emotionally.
The pandemic left the 72-year-old fighting to save his empire
and his reputation.
He's faced questions over how he's used women
to promote his brand.
And sceptics have asked why someone who campaigns on climate change
is sending rockets into space.
The original rebel entrepreneur continues to grab the headlines
and confound his critics.
I've come to Miami to hear the whole story.
Sir Richard Branson,
thank you so much for speaking to me and to the BBC.
How are you?
I'm good. I always think sitting down to do interviews like this
is a bit like - I've never been in a psychiatrist's chair -
it's a bit like being in a psychiatrist's chair.
Are you nervous? Me? Of course I'm nervous.
Is there anything I can do to...? We'll see how you are in an hour.
So, just to be clear, you've not seen or approved the questions
in advance. Nothing's off the table, right?
I'm afraid... I'm afraid that's the case.
You'd be much less nervous if it wasn't the case!
If you google "Richard Branson", the thing that comes up
in the auto-search is net worth.
I mean, people are obsessed with the fortunes of the rich and famous.
It's very rude to ask a man how much he's worth,
so I'm not going to do that. So let me ask instead,
how much did you lose through the pandemic? Did you lose
a lot of money personally in trying to save your companies?
So, the answer is yes. I mean, obviously it cost us
a big percentage of our net worth, maybe a billion and a half.
And, yeah, so there was a time
where it really looked like we were going to lose everything.
We had 50, 60 planes all on the ground
at Heathrow and Gatwick,
and in Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane.
And the health clubs all closed, the hotels all closed.
And the worst would have been, you know,
60,000 people out in the streets.
We sold shares in companies that were public,
and that was one way we managed to find money,
and most jobs were saved as a result.
But personally, I was fortunate in that...
..our kids managed to get to the island
and our grandkids got to the island.
And so although I experienced maybe a couple of months
of what people must feel when they're, yeah, pretty low,
and I'd never experienced that before my life...
Do you mean that for the first time in your life you were depressed?
Yeah, I was certainly...certainly a little depressed.
But, you know, talking about net worth,
I mean, you know, one of the things, I suppose,
if I resent anything in life, is the tag "billionaire".
I think people don't address you by your net worth,
they call you by your name.
Yeah. And what I've spent my lifetime doing is building ventures
that hopefully will make a really positive difference
to people's lives.
In the past, you've written in your book that reputation
is everything, and your reputation took a bit of a hit
during that early phase in the pandemic
because senior members of your team had written to the Government
saying that they needed hundreds of millions of pounds
in a Government loan to save the company and save your airline,
and yet there was coverage, people saying, "Hang on.
"Branson's a billionaire. He lives on an island in the Caribbean.
"You know, surely he can find the money."
I'd never really had any coverage quite as painful as that. Really?
And it's complicated.
So it's difficult to explain to people when everybody is hurting.
I mean, there were pretty well no families that weren't hurting.
But what we were concerned to do
was try to get Government support...
..as happened in America, as happened in France,
as happened in Italy -
not gifts from Government, but underwriting loans
so that the cost to the airline going forward
was not going to be prohibitive.
It's interesting, given the...
You know, given your very interesting relationship
with the media over 50 years, that you should say
you've never had such sort of negative coverage.
Do you think that's just because you're the face of your airline
in a way that British Airways doesn't have a face?
Do you think that's why they said, "Let's go after Richard"?
I think there's an element of that. I mean, I get...
You know, I would say that 99% of the coverage
I've had in my lifetime has been fair.
I mean, I've occasionally had criticisms,
but I would say they were fair criticisms,
and it's quite rare to have had a major knock.
But I think, you know, I remember Sir Freddie Laker once saying to me,
"The way to deal with press backlash is prove them wrong."
And so basically what we ended up doing was just getting on
and proving that our teams were good enough
to come bouncing back.
Someone who I spoke to who you worked with
said if you hadn't called the company Virgin,
you might have called it Phoenix because you've often,
phoenix-from-the-ashes-like, you have bounced back,
and you flew into space.
Three, two, one.
Release, release, release.
Fire, fire.
In a life full of extraordinary experiences, where did that rank?
I've had a lot of pinch-me... pinch-me moments in my life,
but that that definitely culminated them all.
I remember the next morning, before I opened my eyes,
just lying there and...
..and thinking, "Was that a dream?"
Do you mind if I ask you to watch it
and just describe to us what was it you were going through?
Not at all.
Just hit play.
Yeah. So we've...we've gone from 0 to 3,000mph
in seven or eight seconds,
so you've got this incredible rush
as you go up into space
and then the absolute silence of space.
I looked back at the Earth and said a few words to kids.
To all you kids down there,
I was once a child with a dream
looking up to the stars.
Now I'm an adult in a spaceship
with lots of other wonderful adults,
looking down to our beautiful, beautiful Earth.
Cos it was as a kid that I'd been inspired to go to space,
watching the moon with my parents
and realising that there were actually people on the moon
when I was watching it.
And then that incredible moment where you just unbuckle
and you just drift out of your seat
and float up to the ceiling and look down.
And there are, you know, other young people just going swimming...
..swimming through the air beneath you.
And then beneath them is Earth,
and that spectacular view through those spectacular windows.
And obviously, look, we'd had 18 years to get to that point.
We'd had tears, but this was definitely a day of joy
and an incredible moment.
There is this thing called the overview effect,
which astronauts talk about, which, you know, you experienced.
Is it almost like a sort of religious experience,
this almost otherworldly experience, quite literally?
I think for many people it is.
And there's a beautiful book called The Overview Effect,
which interviews all the astronauts who've been to space.
I didn't have a sort of lightning bolt hit me,
but it was just one of those most extraordinary days,
every aspect of it.
Just the whole day's experience was extraordinary.
And I think... You know, the other lovely thing was having spent
so many years building it, one realises that, you know,
there will be, over the next hundred years, thousands of people
are going to be able to have that same experience.
Is that the thing? Because I was going to ask you,
why is space travel a good use of your time and money?
Prince William says when he launched the Earthshot Prize,
he said, "We need some of the world's greatest brains and minds
"fixed on trying to repair this planet,
"not trying to find the next place to go and live."
I've just been to Kenya with Bill Gates, your dear friend.
He's quoted on the front of your book, and he said
that spending a lot of money on space travel
when, you know, you can save a kid's life who's got malaria with $1,000
was not a good use of money. What do you say to them?
And what do you say also to those who say, given climate change
is one of your top priorities, why are you sending rockets into space?
I 100% agree with them that we've got to concentrate
on dealing with a whole lot of issues in this world.
And most of my life is now spent on, you know, tackling a whole raft
of different...different issues in the world.
And I think some of those issues are made easier to deal with
by the fact that I have been to space,
so I can now pick up the phone to pretty well anybody in the world,
get through, cut through the red tape,
and hopefully get things sorted.
But having said that, space travel itself is incredibly important
for this Earth. Communication between people has been transformed
because of space travel and satellites up there.
Monitoring things like the depredation of the rainforest
or illegal fishing has been transformed by satellites up there.
All these are the kinds of benefits that come from space travel.
Critics say the environmental impact of space tourism
could undo decades of work to repair the ozone layer
and have a greater effect on the climate than the aviation industry.
What Virgin and our principal competitors have managed to do
is bring the environmental costs of space travel down dramatically
in terms of carbon cost.
Now that is a thousand times less
than it used to take Nasa to put people into space,
and that will come down even further.
You can't and shouldn't stop progress.
Through progress you get the breakthroughs.
You can never be quite sure what breakthrough you're going to get,
but you get these breakthroughs, and that will benefit the Earth.
Let's come down to Earth, then,
and go back in time to your childhood.
Shamley Green in Surrey.
There is this sort of sepia-tinged quality to your childhood.
You were raised by Ted and Eve, these heroes of the war.
You've often talked about its comfort,
and I think maybe it's because you don't want to hide the fact
that you were born into a comfortable and bucolic childhood.
But your childhood did have huge challenges, didn't it?
And you were sent away to boarding school at seven.
You know, my son Winston is seven in a few months
and he can barely tie his shoe laces.
I mean, he's a great kid, but the idea of him going off
to boarding school at seven...
It seems rather cruel in retrospect, doesn't it?
I know that my parents sent me to boarding school
because they thought that that was the best thing...
..best thing for me and that was the way to bring us up tough,
and my mother would say "not to mollycoddle you at home",
but I think it was wrong.
I mean, we would never do it with our kids or our grandkids.
I remember distinctly - I was seven and a half -
you know, throwing up the first night,
and the matron coming in and telling me I had to mop up...
..mop up the sheets myself.
And I just think that is a bit much for a seven-and-a-half-year-old.
That's awful. Yeah, not good.
Fortunately, I think things have changed a little bit
since those days. They have.
Not just in terms of when we send kids away,
but also our understanding of minds. When you were growing up,
the word entrepreneur had barely entered the lexicon
and the word dyslexia even less so.
You talk now about your dyslexia as a superpower,
which we'll get onto.
But just before we talk about it as a superpower,
people should understand when they're thinking about your story
that at school you were beaten,
you know, you received corporal punishment, beatings
for being stupid.
What happened exactly?
Oh, erm...
Er...
Yeah, we got beaten all the time.
You know, you'd be beaten with a bare arse
and sometimes till you bled.
So it was...it was...
Yeah, pretty...pretty horrendous in those days.
And, yeah, as a dyslexic, I thought I must be stupid
because, you know, they'd never heard of...
The word dyslexia didn't exist.
You hid those beatings from your mum, didn't you?
I'm... I don't know. I may have...I may have, er...
Yeah, I don't think... I don't think I would have mentioned it to her,
er, most likely.
Greta Thunberg told me that her Asperger's was her superpower.
Why is dyslexia your superpower?
With people who are dyslexic, they're apt to exceed at things
that they're good at and they become very good delegators at things
that they're not...not good at.
For me, one of the best things about being dyslexic
was that the things I was good at,
ie, finding out what was going on in the world,
reading about the Vietnamese War,
the Biafran War, led me to decide to start a magazine,
which is quite strange for a dyslexic person to have done.
Launched in 1968, Student was a national magazine
for young people, run from a ramshackle basement
and then the crypt of a church.
To help overcome his dyslexia,
Sir Richard would interview some of the most articulate people
in the world, from Jean-Paul Sartre to James Baldwin,
and then publish those recordings word for word.
When the headmaster said to me,
"You're either going to have to run the magazine and leave the school
"or not run the magazine and get on with your schoolwork,"
it was an easy decision.
I decided to say, "Thank you very much. I'm off."
So, if I hadn't been dyslexic,
I most likely wouldn't have left school at 15, 16 years old,
and my life would have been very different.
Dyslexia has become a superpower
because I think I've become a really good delegator.
I find great people. I surround myself with wonderful people.
Hello, how are you? Nice to see you.
More than a thousand of Branson's people
were on board one of his cruise ships, the Valiant Lady,
when we join him hours before the boat set off for the Caribbean.
Good to see you. Yeah, nice to see you.
Sir Richard entered the cruise ship business in 2021
with the first sailing of Virgin Voyages.
You're looking... Are you off for a few days, huh?
Yeah. Yeah? OK. Well, have a good trip.
One of the big things that you've spoken about throughout your career
is about hiring well - you know, bringing together the right people.
And you've got a very particular... I can see it walking round here.
You've got a very particular philosophy of hiring,
which is that you hire from within. Why do you do that?
Erm, well, first of all, we look...we look for character
rather than, you know, somebody's CV.
Erm, obviously, if you hire from within,
you're going to know somebody's good points and bad points
before you take them on,
and there's a danger that if you bring somebody in,
a so-called expert from outside, they will be a horrible mistake
and they will be bad with people
and they'll mess up...mess up a happy company,
and that's the last thing we want.
It's so interesting you say that about CVs, because I think
you may know I've got a big interest in social mobility and helping kids
from poorer backgrounds try and get into elite professions,
and the story they all feel that they're sold
is that if you really want to make it as an entrepreneur,
if you want to come to a place like Miami,
you need to pass ever more exams. You need to go to university,
you need to graduate. That's not true, is it?
I think it depends what profession you're trying to get into.
Erm, obviously, if you want to become a doctor,
you know, you had to go to university.
But if you want to be an entrepreneur, being an entrepreneur
is simply coming up with an idea to make other people's lives better
and then getting on and doing it and trying it,
and...and universities are not going to be able
to teach you that that well.
So... So, people who can't get into university,
a really good alternative for them is to just try setting up
a small little business, see how it goes.
If it doesn't work out, try again until they succeed.
And the young people from all around the UK who say to me,
because they're not from London and they've got strong accents
and they're very paranoid about their accent - they may come
from rural Somerset or Hull or Mansfield - and they say
that they're worried that if you sound like them,
it's going to hold them back.
Honestly, will it hold them back?
No, I really... Really? I really don't think so.
Anyway, my...my wife's Glaswegian accent
is half of what I found so attractive about her.
The other half I won't go into details about.
But anyway, I think... Honestly, it shouldn't matter.
I don't think it does generally matter.
There may be some snooty British companies still left
that...where it might make a difference. I doubt it.
Nice to meet you. Good to see you.
Hi there! Hello! How are you?
Have a great voyage. Thank you for having us.
Yeah. Richard, nice to meet you. Nice to...
This guy's a rock star.
And is it any wonder? He's learnt from the best.
By the early 1970s, Sir Richard was immersed in the music world,
first with a mail-order record business and then a Virgin store.
Before long, he had his own label and recording studio - The Manor.
Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells was the first big hit,
selling more than five million copies.
MUSIC: Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield
In the following years, everyone from the Rolling Stones
to Culture Club to Janet Jackson
were laying down tracks for Virgin Records.
Just, if you would, just evoke that era, because people like me
who missed it are rather jealous of not being around.
Just evoke that era for us, would you? What was it like?
Mike Oldfield turns up, and the Sex Pistols walk in, and Phil Collins
and Genesis are down the road.
Because it must have been exhilarating.
Erm... It was exhilarating. It was...
It was a wonderful era. Bands could come and record all night
and sleep all day,
and that was just tremendously exciting.
It was... It was great to be... to be young and...and alive
at that time.
And you came across some icons as they were just setting out.
Just tell me about the time when
Keith Richards taught you how to roll a spliff.
GUITAR RIFF PLAYS
Erm... Well, because I... Because I started off in business
so early on in life, I...I just didn't have the time to get, er,
stoned like a lot of my friends.
Erm, but Keith Richards was at The Manor, and, yeah,
he kindly invited me for a spliff.
You definitely don't say no to Keith Richards.
And... And he does it.
I won't be able to explain exactly,
but he does it with a beautiful art, in a beautiful way.
Yeah... I'm sorry.
The reason I was pausing was I was thinking of once when he was there,
there was this banging on the front door and this enormous guy was there
wanting to have a word with Keith Richards,
because he thought he was there with his wife.
And, erm, I told him that, you know, he was obviously mistaken,
but I was nervous because I knew
that Keith was actually there with somebody.
And then I looked over this guy's shoulder and I could see
a naked Keith Richards and a naked lady running
across the lawn behind him.
So I invited him in and said,
"Look, you're very welcome to search the house.
"I can assure you that Keith and your wife are not in the house."
So, erm...
It was at The Manor that Sir Richard met his future wife, Joan,
with whom he would have children Holly and Sam.
Living on a houseboat to save cash,
he was on the hunt for something bigger - much bigger.
In 1978, he bought Necker Island in the Caribbean Sea for $180,000.
It would eventually become his home and a holiday resort.
But it's proved controversial,
with some claiming that by making it his place of residence,
Sir Richard has been able to avoid taxes
his critics argue he should pay.
You've lived in the Caribbean on your own island, Necker Island,
for some of the year for many years.
And you've also been open about using legal means -
and they are legal means - to keep your tax bill down
so that your companies remain competitive, and you've contributed
millions in tax over the years to many different jurisdictions.
But still, tax avoidance, which is legal, may not be illegal,
but is it immoral?
Just... Your question I slightly resent.
I will tell you exactly as it is.
I started with 200, erm...
..£200 from a necklace that my mum found
and we sold.
I have paid literally billions...
You know, and our companies pay billions
in taxes over the years.
And we've created over the whole time
maybe a million and a half jobs -
obviously, a lot of those people have moved on to other jobs -
but a lot of jobs.
The reason I live on Necker was I fell in love with a lovely lady
when I was 28, Joan. And I fell in love with a beautiful island.
And I live on Necker because it's the most beautiful place
in the world to live.
I've worked extremely hard for many years,
and I now use Necker as a base.
Erm, the personal money that I earn, I give all to charities.
You know, so all I can say is we have paid billions and billions
in taxes over the years and we'll continue to do so.
And our companies pay taxes in whichever country
and whichever jurisdiction they're based.
By the 1980s, the bulk of the Virgin income was still coming
from the burgeoning music business.
It was a time of success and excess. But a shadow was looming.
It's the 1980s. You were a very big figure in British music.
You had this huge record company.
But we can't really talk about the 1980s music scene
without talking about the devastating impact of Aids.
And you bought the nightclub Heaven in 1982, and it was there
that a gay man called Terence Higgins collapsed.
And the trust, which campaigns on Aids in his name,
you're a patron of, and you set up Mates condoms to promote safe sex.
Did you ever lose any friends to Aids?
Yeah. I mean, there were a lot of...
Erm, Freddie Mercury was a friend.
I mean, there were a lot of people I knew that died of Aids.
There was a man called Donald, who was a waiter in our game reserve
in South Africa,
and he wrote a very powerful poem
just before he died.
"Aids is not a disease.
"It is a war that is on Africa."
Erm, and, er...
And it was it was a long, powerful poem
appealing to the government to do something about it.
And I remember going to South Africa after his death, and we set up
the Bhubezi Clinic near Ulusaba
so that at least people in that region could get
anti-retroviral drugs.
And I remember going through... going down a street in Jo'burg,
and every single shop had been turned into funeral parlours.
There were just, erm, you know,
massive adverts for funeral parlours.
And it was then that we decided to set up Mates condoms,
which was a condom company,
to try to rival Durex,
to try to encourage them to advertise,
because they weren't advertising the need for wearing condoms.
And the condom was about the only way of actually stopping
somebody getting Aids.
You've been a great champion of LGBTQ+ rights, and of gay marriage,
amongst other causes. Are there times in business
when your kind of personal convictions and campaigns do rub up
against your business interests?
So, for instance, Virgin Galactic is, I think, nearly a third owned
by Abu Dhabi, and that's a country where it's illegal to be gay.
How do you navigate that sort of tension? As much as possible,
one does what's right at the time.
And... And I think... I think we've been consistent.
In Uganda we've been campaigning against life in prison
if you're found to be gay.
Just taking it head-on in as many countries as possible.
And also trying to get people
to realise that the gay fight is not finished yet.
You know, it's been sort of won in America,
but the money that was going into fighting it there
now needs to be put into fighting it overseas.
Sir Richard is used to a fight.
When he launched Virgin Atlantic in 1984, with a single 747
flying to New York, he expected to have to battle for his place
in the skies.
But he had no idea just how dirty the fight
with British Airways would become.
By the early '90s, what became known as BA's "dirty tricks" campaign
led Branson to court.
But pursuing justice was an expensive exercise,
one he had to fund by selling Virgin Records
for over half a billion pounds.
You're talked about how companies are just basically
collections of people. It's almost like they're your children.
And you looked after them.
But to have to sell a company that you'd spent so long building,
and which you'd grown with, must have been very, very difficult.
Yeah. Erm, British Airways, erm, basically decided
to get rid of Virgin Atlantic. We were a very small airline,
three or four planes,
but they had got rid of Air Europe,
they had got rid of British Caledonian,
they had got rid of Dan-Air, Sir Freddie Laker.
And that was their approach.
They're going to be the only airline operating out of the UK.
And so they launched what became
infamously known as the "dirty tricks" campaign,
and they went to extraordinary lengths
to try to put us out of business.
They were intercepting our passengers when they got
to the airport, trying to switch them from Virgin to British Airways.
Literally, you know, as they got out of their cars,
going and offering them deals on the pavement.
They had a unit behind locked doors
erm, where they had teams of people sworn to secrecy
who were pretending to be working for Virgin
illegally accessing our computer information,
ringing up our, er, passengers,
saying that they were from Virgin, that the flight had been cancelled,
but, "Don't worry, we've managed to switch you onto
"a British Airways flight," and so on and so on.
I mean, this was a taste of what they were doing.
They then publicly called me a liar and denied that they were doing
all these things. But we actually had members of their staff
who were horrified by what they were being asked to do.
Whistle-blowers? Whistle-blowers. They came to us.
So we took them to court
and we won the biggest libel damages in history.
Obviously delighted with today's result and hope that it will
bring in a new era of fair competition
in British aviation history in the future.
It was Christmas-time.
We distributed it to all our staff equally at Christmas.
It became known as the British Airways Christmas bonus.
And the combination of winning that court case and then, sadly,
having to sell the record company to give me the financial muscle
to...to, erm, deal with British Airways,
erm, you know, the combination of those two things
meant that Virgin Atlantic became secure.
But the thing that was so fascinating about that battle
with BA was that it pitted you - as you yourself call it,
you're a sort of '60s hippie from Surrey,
but who is big in the world of showbiz -
it pitted you against the ruling class,
because Lord King, the boss of BA, was a pillar of the establishment.
I want to see the future.
REPORTER: How much has this got to do with the "dirty tricks" campaign?
Nothing, madam.
He had a country estate.
He was someone who'd been around for a very, very long time.
And he didn't just set out to destroy you, but to ridicule you.
I mean, he said... What was it he said?
That you were too old to rock, too young to fly
and to be a pilot.
You loved fighting him, didn't you? And you love a fight, don't you?
That sort of thing. You relished taking him on through the courts
and elsewhere.
We relished winning.
Erm, er, it was not fun.
It was a lonely fight. It wasn't actually, you know,
the David versus Goliath fight at the time.
With Mates condoms, you took on you took on Durex.
With Virgin Atlantic, you took on British Airways.
Within the music industry,
you took on these huge pillars of this establishment.
Have you enjoyed being an insurgent?
And what makes insurgents win?
Why do - and how do - Davids beat Goliaths?
You know, I think we've...
I think, and you can contradict me if you disagree,
I think we've always been an insurgent, even today.
So, like, our cruise ships,
we've got, you know, three cruise ships
against, you know, Carnival's, you know, couple of hundred.
I think the advantage of being the David versus Goliath
is that you can be much more nimble, you can move much quicker,
you can innovate much, much more quickly.
You can inspire your team much more easily, you know.
So it's a lot more fun, I think, being the David
versus the Goliath.
Having said that, a job of a government is to make sure
that if there's anti-competitive behaviour by a big company,
that's the principal job of a government - is to make sure
that there's a level playing field and that the big companies are not
allowed to get away with it.
And I don't think governments are always that good at that.
You've taken on some very powerful figures.
How does somebody know when you dislike them?
Is it just that Richard Branson comes after their business
and really pursues them very aggressively? How does someone know
when Richard Branson's coming after them? We're a fairly open book.
I think they'll know that we're coming! And generally speaking,
I think you'll find that the bigger business
benefits from the smaller competitor coming after them,
because they have to respond. They have to react.
I remember British Airways once sent out a memo saying,
er, whatever Virgin does, erm,
we must...we must copy it, you know, within a month.
And, you know, I respect that.
I mean, that's good business sense, because we were innovating
all the time. I mean, like, you know, seat-back videos -
we were the first to put seat-back videos on our planes.
But it wasn't just innovation that got Sir Richard Branson attention.
Tonight, with Richard Branson back in London
after his record-breaking transatlantic run,
the Virgin publicity bandwagon is under full steam.
From speedboat crossings to record-breaking balloon attempts,
his adventures secured him headlines
and more than a few brushes with death.
Good evening. Richard Branson's transatlantic balloon flight
has ended in high drama tonight.
He and his co-pilot, Per Linstrand,
abandoned the giant Virgin Atlantic Flyer and landed in the sea
off the west coast of Scotland.
Why are you so addicted to danger?
I'm certainly not addicted to danger
and I'm certainly not craving death!
Sir Richard, how can I put this to you? Erm...
I mean, was it at the back of your book you've got 75 -
no, 79 - near-death experiences?
I think that's the first thing you've said which I'm going
to actually go so far as to say I disagree with.
And I am going to correct you on that.
Someone who flies hot-air balloons across oceans...
I don't need to tell you, but somebody who does some of the things
that you've done, and that you're famous for,
IS a bit addicted to danger, with all due respect.
So, I will still take issue.
I'm not addicted to death and I'm not addicted to danger.
What I am addicted to is to actually say yes to things.
And I'm addicted to challenging myself and seeing
what I'm capable of.
And if somebody comes along to me and says,
"Nobody's crossed the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon before..."
There aren't many world records left.
And, you know, I've never flown a hot-air balloon before.
You know, what fun it would be to learn to fly a hot-air balloon
and then to see if we could cross the Atlantic in it.
And then you try to work out all the things that can go wrong
and you try to make sure that you can come back
to tell the tale.
But to be honest, I'm just like any other human being.
When things did go wrong - they went wrong a lot of times, I agree -
I was as shit scared as the next person!
I did not want to die.
But my problem is that I can't say no.
I love a challenge.
And your problem is that you inspire a lot of people
and then they end up getting into some dangerous situations.
I just want to play you a moment when your son Sam
had a pretty near-death experience himself.
Word has it that Noah and Sam are quite close to the top now,
so we're hoping to get there in time for their final summit.
It's just over with the steep slopes.
Just stay with me.
Climbing mountains,
you can get altitude sickness.
And Sam got very, very bad altitude sickness climbing the Matterhorn.
We had to helicopter him off,
but I would not...
And he would not recommend that he didn't climb
another mountain subsequently.
I mean, we've climbed Mont Blanc,
you know, a couple of times together.
I've said it before, but my approach to life is that
the brave may not live for ever,
but the cautious do not live at all.
And I really... I really believe that.
And I think our family have got enormous satisfaction
from pushing ourselves to the limits.
But as a father, when you watch your son Sam being rescued,
doesn't it make you rethink your own behaviour,
realising what you must have put your own family through?
I mean, it must... I mean, I watch that as a dad and I think...
It makes me wince.
So, my poor wife is the one that,
you know, has to now watch the three of us
doing these adventures together.
I mean, myself, my son and daughter are off on another adventure.
Later on in the year, we're going to be doing Bhutan...
Now, erm...
..you know, we raise good money for good causes by doing it.
And we push ourselves to the limits
and we accept that you're not going to live for ever.
But I don't want to die early.
I... I...
But I thoroughly enjoy, as do my kids,
having extreme challenges together.
Today, Branson's adventures might just be for fun,
but for decades they played a vital role
in promoting and growing the Virgin brand - as, too, did women.
His publicity stunts, often involving women partially clothed,
were highly effective at getting him media attention.
But times have changed.
Just recently, you said, "In the early days of Virgin,
"society was very different.
"I doubt you'll see me turning girls upside down
"or picking up ladies today.
"Whereas, 38 years ago, if I didn't do that,
"I wouldn't get in a newspaper."
When you look back at some of those campaigns -
it's very dangerous to judge
historic periods through modern mores -
but when you look back at some of those campaigns,
does some of that stuff make you wince?
Or would you just think it was fit for the time?
I think it would... It would make me wince
if I felt the women would be... were uncomfortable at all.
I don't think that I ever made anybody feel uncomfortable.
It was... It was just, in those days...
In those days, it made them smile.
You know, like Kate Moss, for instance,
she laughed. She knew what was coming.
But, today, obviously, you know, I would...you would...
..I think people would feel uncomfortable
with something like that.
So it's changed and...and I fully accept that.
And... And, erm, I've changed alongside everybody else.
It's interesting you say that.
And it's interesting you wrote that recently,
because you were such a powerful figure in such a glamorous industry.
And in recent years, a lot of men have re-examined their behaviour
toward women and wondered if they went too far.
Have you? Have you thought about that?
No, I don't...
Look, I don't think I've ever done anything with...
Anyway, I slightly resent the question, to be honest.
Do you mind...?
Cos...I've never, ever done anything
that would make any woman feel uncomfortable.
It wasn't marketing campaigns.
You know, this was...
Erm...
I... Yeah, I mean, it was...
It was just having a fun, you know, a fun photo...photo opportunity
for newspapers who lapped it up.
And that was... We didn't have the internet.
That was the way we got ourselves... you know, got Virgin Atlantic known.
In my research for this interview,
I've spoken to a lot of people who you've worked with,
including some who were with you at the very beginning of Virgin.
And one of the things they all said...
I should say, in the spirit of transparency,
they were very warm about you, they were all very kind about you.
But one of the things a lot of them said was,
"The thing about Richard is he's very easily bored."
They said, you know, "He's got this tendency to be a bit twitchy.
"He likes moving around."
And there's a fascinating line in your book where you say,
"I work best when my mind is able to jump from one topic to the next
"in quick succession."
So I look this up on the British Dyslexia Association
and they say that a lot of people who have dyslexia also have ADHD,
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
I asked my wife whether I had ADHD,
and she said, "Only when you're... "Only when you're talking to me.
"But... But... But..." THEY LAUGH
"But, Richard, you...you have...
"You have a syndrome
"that hasn't been invented yet." Branson Syndrome.
And... Quick as a flash.
But, yeah, I think it's quite likely I have ADHD as well.
And does that mean a superpower as well?
I love to learn. I love to learn.
If I feel I've learnt all there is about something,
I want to move on and learn about something else.
And as a result, I suppose I've created,
I suspect, if I really went back into it,
maybe 500 different companies in my lifetime
in, I don't know, 300 different sectors.
But I've learnt... You know,
it's just been one long, fascinating education,
an education that I never had at school, and I wouldn't change it.
It wouldn't change it at all.
I mean, one of my books is called Screw It, Let's Do It.
And, you know...
You know, if you take that philosophy
and you just screw it and do it, you're going to learn...
You're going to learn a lot.
You might fall flat on your face, but sometimes it'll work out.
And what advice would you give to a billionaire in his 70s
who's having trouble slowing down?
My own feeling is that I've...
I'm in an extraordinary position
and not to waste the position I find myself in.
There are a lot of issues this world needs dealing with.
You've got politicians who can do so much,
but then they may be only two years maximum
in a particular department before they're moved on
to something else.
I've had 55 years of experience as an entrepreneur and businessman
and travelled the world,
and I think I'm in a position to help politicians
and try to address some of the bigger issues of the world.
And that's what I enjoy doing.
And I'm not... I'm not going to sit back
and not make the best of that position.
Which is why, today,
much of Sir Richard's time is not spent on business,
but crusading for causes, from drug policy
to opposing the death penalty.
And he's also outspoken on other issues close to home.
Reading your book, I was very struck by how outspoken you were
about Britain's economic prospects.
And for almost 50 years, you've kind of personified
some of Britain's economic prospects.
You know, the 1970s and '80s, you were someone who was seen
as the go-to guy to fix economic malaise.
If you look at the evidence and the data now,
Britain's had a pretty tough 15 years -
low growth, low productivity.
And you write that Britain is a country teetering on the edge.
How bad is it?
Obviously, if you suddenly reduce your market size
from the whole of Europe, the biggest market in the world,
to just Britain, it's going to have a negative effect.
So, you know, what...
What we as businesspeople, and I think I almost talk with one voice
with, you know, with all entrepreneurs, all businesspeople...
We would like governments to have a sensible discussion
with the European Union and explore.
Maybe... Maybe we could try the Norwegian model.
Maybe we could try a bit of the Swiss model.
Maybe we can have our own unique British model
to make sure that we... that British business
is not adversely affected.
Come up with a new relationship with a single market, basically.
Exactly.
The Brexiteers can still keep their, you know, their main demands,
but having a trading relationship,
it must be good for employment in Britain and good for business.
I've heard that you're quite competitive.
Is that vaguely true?
Let's see... Yeah, it's definitely true.
Are you...? You're quite into chess, aren't you?
I enjoy a game of chess, but that sounds ominous when somebody...
Is it true that you let your grandchildren beat you at chess?
Yeah. I mean, I let my grandchildren beat me until they were six.
Well, before we have a game...
If you're up for a game of chess, I'd be very up for it.
And you don't have to let me win! Let me ask you one final thing.
For 50 years... I think it was after...
It was Freddie Laker's advice, your mentor, Freddie Laker,
who said, "Richard, you've got to put yourself front and forward.
"Yes, you're shy, but you've got to make yourself a brand
"and people have got to get to know you."
You've been so synonymous with Virgin for so long,
probably more than any entrepreneur with any company in the world.
Where is - and what is - Virgin after Sir Richard?
You must think about succession planning.
Yeah, I do. And...
And we have serious discussions as a family about
how...how the company can transform,
hopefully, thousands of people's lives
in the years to come and hopefully in the centuries to come.
How good are you at chess, seriously?
Because I'm a bit worried that we've set this thing up
and you're going to smash me to pieces.
I don't read... I don't read any moves. No, no, no.
You can be white if you like. You can be white.
Erm, now...
..where are we?
I'm going to distract you with some quickfire questions.
Who's your greatest hero, living or dead?
Erm, Mand... A cross between Mandela and Archbishop Tutu.
But we'll say Mandela.
Favourite film.
It has to be The Godfather.
Which one? Part I, II or III? Part I.
When did you last cry?
Erm...
I think the last time I maybe cried
was, you know, writing a letter.
To your family? To my family. Yeah.
What do you fear most?
Erm... I think a family member being unwell.
It's not checkmate yet.
Oh, maybe it is.
Oh! RICHARD LAUGHS
Thank you. That's really terrible.
Oh, no. Well played. Yeah.
Oh, dear. Beaten.
We'll have to have a rematch.
I would look forward to that.
Oh, dear. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
Has it been a pleasure?
Mostly! THEY LAUGH
Sign of a good interview, that. Thank you very much indeed. No. OK.
We should set these up. Oh, man.