Branson. Tom Bower
weakly. The predator, he sighed, did not understand. Time Out’s staff would dislike Branson even more than him. Branson was suburban. He was no rebel. His pride was to be the anti-intellectual, a trader in the market and a hero for the aspiring working class. He would make matters worse. ‘No thanks,’ replied Elliott later that night. ‘Bollocks,’ muttered Branson, unable to conceal the hurt. In his mind, business was like the game of Monopoly he played as a child where he customarily placed, against the rules, two hotels on both Mayfair and Park Lane. Any opponent landing on his property was compelled to surrender immediately. Similarly, the pleasure of Elliott’s pain was desired immediately.
‘If he won’t join me, I’ll beat him,’ Branson decided. Copying Elliott’s idea was effortless and enticing Time Out’s staff was the most obvious way to crash fast into the market. There was no hesitation. Pearce Marchbank, Time Out’s designer, was his first recruit. ‘I want to be editor,’ stipulated Marchbank. Since Marchbank could hasten the recruitment of other Time Out staff, Branson agreed. ‘I want Event ready to go in twelve weeks,’ Marchbank was ordered. The only hint of interference during those weeks, Marchbank acknowledged, was the prudent delivery of cocaine to keep the staff awake, albeit without Branson’s knowledge.
Ten weeks later, on 18 September 1981, Branson was puzzled. Elliott’s fox had outsmarted Branson’s lumbering hounds. After locking out the strikers, Time Out was relaunched with Mel Brooks on the cover, identical to Event’s planned first edition due to appear a few days later. ‘He’s stolen our idea,’ moaned the advocate of competition, before rallying to tell John Varnom, ‘Fuck. We’re going to win.’
Without warning, on publication day, two weeks later, Branson arrived in Event’s editorial offices in Portobello Road with television crews and his growing entourage. Event was not simply another magazine to earn money for a businessman but Branson’s celebrity launch pad. ‘Here’s my editor,’ he beamed. ‘My magazine will be Number One this week,’ he purred holding up the slick, hundred-page colour magazine. Repeating his predictions on countless radio and TV programmes during the day, he believed, would guarantee fulfilment of his desires. After all, Event looked better than Time Out and the media had, thanks to his ceaseless encouragement, warmed to its birth. In the mindset created by his mother, Ricky always got what Ricky wanted.
Every launch, every anniversary in Branson’s world, required a party. Event’s birth was celebrated at Heaven, his nightclub. ‘It’ll send the wrong signals,’ Marchbank complained. Branson was dismissive. Using Heaven saved money and marketing was his speciality. ‘We’ll be Number One,’ he repeated. ‘I know.’ Having persuaded ITV to broadcast the launch party live, the fun-loving millionaire – selling to his generation – had conceived an appropriate stunt.
Pranks were often Branson’s cure to fill the embarrassing vacuum left by his lack of substantial conversation, especially when he felt under pressure. Branson fulfilled his mother’s stricture – ‘Ricky do something’ – by often vulgar, sometimes hilarious contrivances. Dressing up or undressing completely, screaming from the top of a tent or standing naked in a street covered with raspberry jam, Ricky begged to be the life and soul of his party. To attract attention at Event’s launch celebration he contrived a ‘drama’. Unsuspecting, Marchbank obeyed Branson’s summons to come nearer the television camera. Handsome, witty and sophisticated, the editor possessed qualities which Branson envied. With a huge laugh, the proprietor pushed a cream cake into Marchbank’s face. ‘Live on TV,’ Branson laughed, convinced of the audience’s appreciation. Marchbank’s reaction was irrelevant.
‘Sales are not much good,’ Branson complained three weeks later. Marchbank urged patience. ‘Magazines aren’t records,’ he replied. ‘You’ve got to haemorrhage money to make it work.’
Haemorrhaging money, however, was unacceptable. Branson was irritated. In the rock world, a big hit guaranteed an immediate avalanche of profits. The mathematics of profits in publishing required careful calculation and an attention to detail which bored Branson. Keeping budgets tight, ‘protecting the downside’, was his philosophy. Innovation was anathema because he eschewed unquantifiable risks. His formula was to pick someone else’s idea and muscle noisily into the market with a fixed sum of money. His gambles, he believed, were carefully controlled. In the launch of Event, his plan had been to replace Time Out, not to compete. Gradual development was not an option. He wanted, even expected, immediate success. He had grown to dislike journalists. They were a breed who enjoyed high living at their proprietor’s expense.
Branson’s solution was shock. Publishing embarrassing exposés about the famous, he hoped, would attract readers. After recruiting staff from Private Eye, whose regular ridicules of himself as ‘The Boy Genius’ he condemned as ‘spiteful’ and ‘slurs’, he ordered Al Clark to publish an account about two senior Fleet Street journalists found copulating in public behind a bush. ‘But they’re the parents of a friend,’ protested Clark. Branson was impervious. Most journalists, he assumed, were pliable. ‘It’s part of life,’ he smiled. Intrusion would sell. Clark resigned rather than become involved in unnecessary vilification.
Stepping into the gutter did not rescue sales. Nor did the dispatch of Vanessa, his sister, with her husband Robert Devereux on a horse-drawn coach through London throwing copies of Event to passers-by attract any attention. To succeed, Event required clarity of purpose and originality. Branson offered neither. ‘The budget’s cut,’ he announced after six weeks, pleased that his crude solution stunned Pearce Marchbank. The following week the editor was fired. A man cleverer than him had been decisively humiliated. The blame for any mistakes was heaped on to others. Accepting his personal responsibility for errors was strenuously avoided by Branson. A succession of editors and declining numbers of staff became the pattern at Event. After eight months Branson pondered surrender. As a final throw, he telephoned Elliott late in the evening. ‘I’ll keep pouring money in until you’re finished,’ he threatened. ‘Will you sell Time Out?’
‘You don’t understand,’ replied a slightly drunk Elliott. ‘If you bought Time Out, the staff wouldn’t respect you. It would signal us going down market.’
Soon after, in September 1982, Event was abandoned. Branson’s ambition had cost nearly £1 million.
The legacy was worse than wounded pride and a pile of debts. Disloyalty, he cursed, had caused the failure. Those deemed by Branson to be culpable were classified as traitors to be punished socially and financially. When they next met at a party, Branson ignored Suzie McKenzie. John Varnom, a loyal founder of the family, was similarly dismissed. ‘We’ll have to find a new home for you,’ Varnom was unceremoniously told as the two men drove together through London. ‘Bugger you,’ scoffed ‘Rasputin’ and jumped from Branson’s moving car to be practically forgotten by the indifferent driver. Martin Tomkinson, recruited from Private Eye, recovered part of his wages only after arriving unexpectedly on Branson’s houseboat and refusing to depart unpaid. Pearce Marchbank issued a writ for £7,000 for unpaid wages. Refusing to compromise, Branson arrived in court with an army of lawyers. By the end of the first day’s hearing, Marchbank surrendered in the face of unaffordable costs. ‘Virgin’s hierarchy is a laughably primitive tribe,’ moaned Jonathan Meades, another disillusioned ex-recruit, into the wilderness. Branson had purged his organisation but at some cost. After fifteen years of business, he had for the first time created a group of intelligent critics. ‘He’s always harassing folk to win the best deal,’ that scattered group complained. But the army of still-loyal admirers agreed with Branson’s self-assessment: ‘he doesn’t cheat his friends and is generous with employees’. Branson the star, most agreed, was only protecting his reputation. Virgin Music’s fortunes continued to soar.
With Steve Lewis’s encouragement, Virgin Music’s deputy managing director, the company had signed Boy George and Culture Club, the world’s latest superstars. As a result, the projection of Virgin’s profits for 1983 was £11.4 million on turnover heading towards £94 million. Emboldened by the rash of new Virgin offices across the world and his growing fame, Branson’s braggadocio emboldened him to crush any challenge to his veracity.