Me and Sir Richard Branson

There was an article in the ‘Good Weekend’ Magazine in the Melbourne Age recently, with a photograph of Richard in 1969, this was so similar to a photo of yours truly in the same year, that it was pointed out to me by my heiry son. This in itself was a bit of a surprise, as he normally treats me with the disrespect that is customary for teenagers to afford to their elders and betters.

I don't seem to be able to get the photograph of R.B. so you will have to take my word for it. So, use your imagination and try to picture R.B. as clean shaven, younger, with a pair of thick-rimmed specs, a tad more tousled than me and with the same gormless look and there you have it. No! your imagination can’t stretch that far?


Whatever, R.B. and myself looked like identical twins in 1969, perhaps we were separated at birth, there are a couple of small problems with this theory though. I was born in New Mills, Derbyshire and R.B. was born in “the unlikely setting of Shamley Green, a small village in Surrey”, to quote the ‘Age’ article. His father was a lawyer and his grandfather was a judge and mine weren’t.

These are only minor differences in my opinion. The major difference seems to me to be that R.B. is currently the 236th richest man in the world according to ‘Forbes Magazine’ and I am unsure of my own ranking, as it doesn’t appear in that particular magazine, for reasons known only to themselves. I very much doubt that I would make 2,360,000th, but could possibly be the 23,600,000th, I don’t really want to go much lower than that. I don’t think my self esteem could handle it.

So what went wrong? He finished school after publishing a successful magazine while studying for his ‘O’ levels, I was still delivering successful newspapers (such as the ‘Daily Mirror’) while studying for my ‘A’ levels. I think that must have been where we started drifting apart.

He was arrested in 1971, for selling records in the UK that he had pretended to export to Europe, thus avoiding paying purchase tax, he spent one night in a cell, before his dear old Mum put up the family home as surety to bail him out. I once spent a couple of hours in a cell in the Philippines, I bribed a cop about A$100 to get out, but that’s another story. I only mentioned that to highlight the similarities.

I can only conclude that it all boils down to Richies’ sheer ruthlessness and naked ambition to succeed. In my case, I’ve never really had any ambition, naked, or fully clothed, including thermal underwear and I didn’t have any ruth to start off with either, so I couldn’t lose it. Not to mention the fact that I reckon the best thing to succeed is a parrot. So, there’s a lesson to be learned in there somewhere, but don’t ask me what it is. Maybe, I’m just a late developer and my best is yet to come.

Next time you’re in Melbourne, Rich, just look me up and we can compare notes about life in the UK in the sixties, I may be able to give you a few tips on how to chill out. It must be a bit stressful being a billionaire and perhaps you could slip me a few bundles of folding stuff as ‘seed capital’. Although you seem to be doing a pretty good job of chilling out by yourself, with all those nubile young lasses. If you bring your photo album, we could still have a bit of a giggle together, don’t forget the folding stuff though.

Cheers for now,

SkyBlueSkull.