Branson. Tom Bower
to be forgotten even invented a passing whale to suggest danger. ‘It was just as safe as the first trip,’ Blyth grunted, contradicting Branson’s on-the-verge-of-death accounts.
With just two hours to spare, the boat crossed the finishing line. Branson’s luck was extraordinary. Millions were watching the half-time summary of the World Cup in Mexico on television. His success was flashed on the TV screens followed by live pictures of Virgin’s hero. ‘More millions of free publicity,’ crowed Branson.
‘Mrs Thatcher says she wants to see the boat,’ Branson told his publicists. His coup – calling in favours – was remarkable. No one understood how Branson’s personal telephone call to Margaret Thatcher lured the prime minister on 3 July 1986 to the River Thames to promote Virgin. Standing beside Thatcher, Branson sped at 30 knots, unlawfully fast, under Tower Bridge raised in salute to a British hero. Branson never considered the irony that nine years earlier he had deliberately broken the law on the same river to promote the Sex Pistols, thereby financing his pose next to the Prime Minister. All that mattered was the intoxicating glamour and the media attention. ‘He’s done it,’ screamed the Daily Mail’s headline. ‘Richard the Lionheart,’ worshipped the Daily Express. ‘Pride of the Atlantic’, ‘King of the Waves’, ‘Salute to Challenger’, ‘Towering Triumph’, blared other newspapers.
In a round-Britain tour, Challenger II docked in harbours to promote Virgin, with Branson making guest appearances. His presence was hailed by ordinary people as historic. Virgin shops reported record sales. Cheered as a national hero, Branson swelled with the adulation. Virgin, he mused, had become more than merely a player. The company had entered the nation’s folklore and he had been anointed an icon. Reality chose that inappropriate moment to bite back.
‘The fans are puking about you and Thatcher,’ Jeremy Lascelles, Virgin Music’s A&R manager, told Branson with an unexpected grimace hours after his return to his office. ‘It’s all very unhelpful with the bands too. They loathe Thatcher.’ Branson was shocked. Thatcherism – the encouragement of entrepreneurship, the privatisation of state industries and the moral legitimacy of wealth – enabled his success and he had occasionally accepted invitations to Downing Street. The ‘hippie tycoon’ and classless toff whose popular appeal straddled social barriers, had never revealed his sympathy for Margaret Thatcher. ‘Most young people in Britain are like me,’ he scoffed. ‘We are more popular than you think.’ Momentarily, Lascelles was puzzled. ‘We,’ Lascelles mused. ‘What does he mean “We”?’ Moments later, Lascelles, a charming musician, believed he understood. Branson was apparently speaking royally. ‘We can do no wrong,’ Branson repeated. ‘You see,’ he told Lascelles, ‘the press are treating us favourably.’ Reality and illusion merged in the hero’s mind, often incoherently. After again posing for newspaper photographers with his children, he pontificated, ‘I would never involve my family with the press.’ Overwhelmed by the celebrity, he could not imagine that an assistant was struggling to persuade musicians to appear in an edition of This Is Your Life to celebrate Branson. ‘People don’t want to know,’ Sian Davis, a publicist, moaned. ‘Even the Human League’s manager said “No”.’
The television programme possibly contributed another subtle change of the chameleon’s colour. The new image was modesty. He eschewed expensive cars, preached that he flew economy class – ‘the extra comfort is not worth the extra cost,’ scoffed the owner of an airline seeking business class passengers – and espoused a carefully refined casual style. With echoes of his sixties credo, Branson chose to speak again as the champion of the people. His natural nonchalance was commercially advantageous. The star had become a valuable commodity. Major corporations were seeking Branson’s endorsement in advertisements. In the new yuppie era, socialism was discredited and wealth was no longer sinful. Branson as the classless, benevolent rags to riches tycoon compared well with the suffocating grandeur of his competitors. But the reality was a lifestyle of extraordinary opulence in a life divided between a large house in Notting Hill, Mill End, his country house in Oxfordshire, and Necker, expensively developed by the company.
Hosting parties at the weekend, organising endless sports competitions, ample food and wine and free foreign holidays satisfied Branson’s need for entertainment. Jeremy Lascelles, Chris Moss, Simon Draper and many others loved Branson. He guaranteed fun. Few of the chosen jesters could recall what their host actually said but the safety of numbers protected everyone from boredom. Even a growing habit towards exaggeration – ‘How I signed the Sex Pistols’ – was tolerated. The prankster, placing himself at the centre of attention, conjured scenarios exalting his courage: ‘As I bobbed up and down in the Atlantic in a life raft,’ he prattled, ‘I had this vision of Virgin as the largest entertainment group in the world outside the United States.’
Deluded by his own propaganda and the popular hero-worship, he convinced himself that his business and his methods were sufficiently robust to withstand the scrutiny of outsiders. Fatefully, he decided to ask the public not only for their adoration but also for their money.
The national mood in 1986 matched Richard Branson’s ambitions. He wanted to lease another Boeing 747 for a new service to Miami and to launch a myriad of other schemes. The only obstacle was his lack of money. Roger Seelig, his merchant banker and a star in the City, offered the solution.
Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation of state monopolies had encouraged the public to buy shares. Branson was promised by Roger Seelig that the City would provide the millions he desired. ‘You’ve only got to persuade them to trust you and make them understand that Virgin will produce a fortune,’ soothed Seelig. Selling himself and Virgin to the suits in the City, Branson smiled, was not a problem. He was, after all, a man enjoying effortless access to every minister in Whitehall and was fêted by discreet invitations to Downing Street and Chequers. He preferred to ignore the humiliation that year as the failed ‘Minister for Rubbish’ after the launch of UK 2000, a government initiative to encourage the young unemployed. In the war of whispers after the Sun had photographed him holding a broom, even the charitable said, ‘He didn’t enjoy or understand the complexity, pace and politics of charity work.’ The more critical charity workers complained, ‘He was frustrated because there was no immediate return.’ Although still bruised by the ridicule heaped upon him for failing to perform as promised, his credibility as a businessman was so pristine that barbs from a handful of critics ridiculing Thatcher’s favourite with a history of fraud, drugs and rock sleaze were easily ignored.
The critics did not include the bankers and lawyers whom Seelig had invited to Branson’s home. Averting their eyes from discarded food and dishes lying around the living room, the suited professionals were startled by his young son waddling into the room and asking, ‘Daddy where’s my potty?’ Branson’s guests smiled unctuously.
The raw statistics presented by Seelig were encouraging. Virgin’s sales had risen in the twelve months to July 1986 from £119 million to £189 million; its pre-tax profits had risen from £15 million to £19 million; and the company, including the airline, was employing nearly four thousand people. Anyone querying the enhanced profits for 1985 might have noticed that the accounting period had been changed but that was an acceptable legal technique to improve Virgin’s image as Branson was introduced by Seelig to an unusual tribe from the City.
Branson presented himself as the head of a worldwide media empire embracing not only rock music, but also books, films and satellite television. ‘Virgin operates in seventeen countries,’ beamed the thirty-six year old, ‘two-thirds of our income is earned overseas and we’re growing very rapidly. Because of my gut feeling, I’ve set up fifty-five companies and closed down only one.’ Branson knew that his boast was not quite accurate. Many of his small enterprises had collapsed but they were obliterated from the record.
His personal bankers at Samuel Montagu in the City remained enamoured. ‘The sweater’s arrived,’ announced the banker as their client, wearing jeans, sat down with a warm grin. The telephone call for Branson interrupting their meeting was a reminder