Branson, Bollywood, Virgin beauties – and a bit less of the usual cynicism

So here I am on a morning flight from Delhi to Mumbai, sitting next to an Englishman in his early sixties with bright blonde hair and a heavy cold. He has his feet up on the bulkhead and I’m distracted by his sensible black lace-ups: his wife packs for him, an aide whispers later. He’s Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire entrepreneur about whom I’ve written so much over the years, most of it sceptical and unflattering, but never previously met. Between visits to Warsaw, Cairo and Moscow he’s in India for 48 hours to relaunch Virgin Atlantic’s Mumbai route, which closed four years ago when too many carriers got in on the act and passenger demand dropped after the financial crisis.

I’m a guest for the jamboree and this is my one-to-one slot. Other hacks have already put him through his paces on the West Coast rail franchise (his bad-loser stance so far triumphantly vindicated) and the award of a London-Moscow route to easyJet rather than Virgin (he’s taking his bad-loser beef on that one all the way to the Kremlin).