Richard Branson: shyness is a kind of selfishness

I’ve had many encounters with Sir Richard Branson over the 40 years since he launched Virgin Atlantic, the smart, stylish British airline that arguably should be this country’s premier national flag carrier. (As it happens, a Spanish-registered airline called British Airways is the dubious claimant to that status.) 

The oddest and most revealing meeting took place in 1996 around the time he was planning to re-enter the music market. Five years earlier, Branson had sold Virgin Records to EMI for £550 million. I was living in New York and was looking for financial backing for a musical I’d helped create. I called Branson in London, expecting to be fobbed off. Instead, he told me he was coming to New York imminently and that we should discuss the project over breakfast. I couldn’t believe my luck and immediately told my partners to prepare for wealth, fame and Broadway. 

At breakfast I painstakingly walked my potential angel through the plot line, characters, and songs of Save The Last Dance for Me, a story about the songwriter factory that was the Brill Building before the Beatles landed in America.