When Richard Branson was preparing to embark on one of his many highly dangerous ballooning exploits, he accidentally stumbled into a broadcast truck close to the launch site. He quickly realised that the ITN reporter inside was putting the finishing touches to his TV obituary. Not the most reassuring send-off.
Now Britain’s most famous and enduring entrepreneur has been given a generous platform to put his own spin on his legacy - while still very much alive - more than half a century after his business career began with the launch of Student magazine in 1968.
While not an official retrospective, this four-part documentary from HBO, on Sky and NOW in the UK, does sometimes have the feel of one. It opens with the nervous Virgin founder corpsing - if that is the right word - while trying to record a “farewell” message to his family only to be shown if his trip to space on Virgin Galactic in July last year “has gone awry”.
It is a reminder that terrifying brushes with death and disaster are never far away in the otherwise charmed life-story of a 72 year old man who can justifiably claim to be the original business disruptor.
On a practice skydive before the Atlantic balloon crossing, he pulled the cord marked “jettison parachute” rather than “deploy parachute” - a fairly fundamental blunder you would think, which he blames on his dyslexia. Fortunately, a quick reaction from his skydive partner who activated the reserve chute saved us from an early broadcast of that ITN obit.
Similarly his business career, particularly the early years, lurched from one near catastrophe to another. One highly illegal wheeze involved dodging customs duties by driving a van full of records down to Dover and back without ever crossing the border into France. When he was found out and thrown into jail, the young entrepreneur’s mother Eve was asked to find £50,000 surety, and promptly put the family home on the line.
Even when he was a multi-millionaire, the threat of bankruptcy was never far away. By 1980, Virgin Records was days away from folding but a run of chart success with New Romantic artists such as Simple Minds, Human League and Culture Club allowed staff to be paid - and Branson’s personal finances to be restored. “That’s the building that Boy George built,” says Branson proudly pointing to a structure on his Necker Island estate funded by Karma Chameleon.
What seems to have got Branson through all his scrapes - apart from incredible dollops of good luck and generosity - is a combination of irrepressible optimism, frankly jaw-dropping brass neck, and a “can do” resilience drilled into him by his parents, particularly the indefatigable Eve, who died in January 2021.
This biography of Branson is made particularly illuminating by the lengthy contributions from his close family members, including his sisters Vanessa and Lindy and his long-suffering wife Joan. It is skillfully stitched into the otherwise familiar story of rise from gawky teenage publisher to instantly recognisable global business titan.
Together they provide a glimpse into how a man with an unlikely tycoon back story - the shy, dyslexic, Stowe boarding school-educated son of a barrister and an air hostess, born into upper middle class security - ended up as a self-made billionaire.
Eve, though charming and eccentric - ducks and peacocks would rove through the family house - was not one for misplaced self-pity. Her children were told they were “not allowed” to show fear, jealousy or anger, while shyness was “selfish”.
She once told Branson that “she expected me to be Prime Minister one day even, before I was born.”
So perhaps it was no suprise that when her son had made huge successes of Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic, she would still ask him “when are you going to do something worthwhile with your life?”
When the seven year-old schoolboy Branson told his father Ted that another pupil had invited him into his bed every night that term, the response was not outrage or horror but a quiet, “best not to do that sort of thing, old boy.”
There’s a touch of the opening sequence of Succession about the shaky cine camera footage of the young Branson larking around with his siblings and parents, though I hasten to add the comparisons end there. He clearly adores his family, and is the opposite of a Logan Roy-esque patriarchal monster.
It is also facinating to hear more from his partner of 45 years Joan, mother of his two children Holly and Sam, who was so was often left holding the baby, or in one case literally having it, while he tried to set records and garner huge publicity for Virgin, by crossing various expanses of ocean.
Glaswegian working-class Joan has stayed largely in the shadows of the Branson story, and it’s good to get a glimpse of the view from her side of the marriage. Despite the lavish lifestyle, it is clearly not an easy gig. As she said to Branson before one hairy escapade: “If anything happens to you, I will not come to your funeral.”
As for his penchant for publicly manhandling some of the world’s most glamorous women - Kate Moss and Pamela Anderson among them - in the name of publicity? “He probably thought it was fun to turn them upside down. I’m not sure they found it fun.”
It has to be said that director Chris Smith - best known for surfing documentary 100 Foot Wave - has made something of an “authorised” version of the Branson story. As well as the lengthy interviews with the man himself, contributions are mainly from family and admiring former business colleagues, who express affectionate exasperation at worst. Few of the criticisms that have been levelled at Branson and the Virgin empire - the opaque offshore tax arrangements for example - are explored. The largely forgotten duds that mar this glittering history, such as Virgin Cola, Virgin Brides, Virgin Vodka and cosmetics company Virgin Vie are quickly glossed over or ignored.
But the fact remains that it is an incredible saga, and here it’s well and movingly told, full of astonishing vignettes. When the young arch-blagger was pursuing his future wife Joan, who was in New York at the time, he pretended to be interested in buying one of the British Virgin Islands. The Manhattan estate agents fell for the story and “did exactly what I hoped they’d do”, by laying on flights to New York and a helicopter tour of the island, then on sale for $4 million. He ended up with the property Necker Island - for which he eventually paid just $120,000 - and Joan.
Branson is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, and some cannot stand “old Beardy” for his self-promoting, cheesy “compulsory fun” schtick. The near four hours of this documentary are not for them. But strip away all the shameless showmanship and adventurism and you’re left with a businessman who has created one of Britain’s few properly global brands from scratch - and had a hell of a lot of fun along the way. It is not a bad legacy when that obituary comes to be aired for real.
