not selling Andy Williams,’ suggested Al Clark, a contemplative journalist and Virgin’s director of publicity, recruited to Virgin Records after the launch. ‘We need an underground feel,’ suggested the enthusiast who was more perceptive than most in the company. The records offered by Virgin, Branson meekly agreed, would reflect the lifestyle lexicon of the sixties. Like a sponge, he willingly learned from others, hiring people to perform tasks he could not have undertaken. Those arriving at Albion Street in 1969 included Steve Lewis, a North London schoolboy on the eve of going to university. Lewis enjoyed finding more obscure records, buying them at discounts from record shops and dispatching the packages. Lewis and the other employees never recognised Branson as an aspiring tycoon. Even when he moved the business in 1970 to a warehouse in South Wharf Road in Paddington after the Church Commissioners, the landlords of Albion Street, had exposed his repeated deception that the premises classified for domestic occupation were being used contrary to the lease for business, Lewis and the others never thought of themselves as the underpaid employees of a fame-seeking buccaneer.
The alchemy of his personal relationships had been learned in Surrey and at Stowe. Charm and respectfulness covered an elusive character whose ambitions and class were well disguised. Unlike the majority of entrepreneurs, Branson enjoyed deep roots in English society – he had not had to scramble out of the gutter – but he saw commercial value in shedding that pedigree and veering in the opposite direction. Commercial success was connected, he considered, to classlessness. The informality generated loyalty but his agenda, shrouded behind contrived ambiguity, was quite specific. ‘People thought,’ he explained, ‘that because we were twenty-one or twenty-two and had long hair we were part of some grander ideal. But it was always 99.5 per cent business.’ Uncluttered by Sartre or Marx, he could motivate his public school cabal and the working class aspirants by infectious enthusiasm. His dominance was asserted imperceptibly; his genial decisiveness arrived without shouts or threats. Only the astute perceived his insensitivity to the disillusionment bedevilling the sixties generation. While the Class of 1968 unsuccessfully struggled in the early 1970s to disengage from their youthful preoccupations of socialist revolution and free love, Branson suffered none of their emotional turmoil. He had always stood apart from the soul-searching idealists. Free of their self-destructive agonising which eventually constrained the revolutionaries’ professional ambitions, Branson breached the moral code of that era and pursued wealth.
The compartmentalisation began early. One Branson sat behind a desk in the warehouse playing hardball on the telephones as a tycoon; while another Branson, doing ‘good for society’, established the Student Advisory Centre to help young people solve their problems. The unemployed, the suicidal and pregnant girls were invited to telephone for assistance. Although Branson would some years later say that ‘The Advisory Centre was dealing with 3–4,000 people a week at the time’, Jenny Bier, whom he recruited to answer the single telephone, recalls between ‘ten and twenty-five people calling every week’. Of those, about four sought help for abortions. Among the callers in spring 1970 was Jennifer Oliver*, a twenty-year-old undergraduate desperate to terminate a pregnancy. ‘Come and see me,’ offered Branson.
The following day, Jennifer Oliver sat on the other side of the desk in South Wharf Road explaining her predicament, dismayed by the frequent interruption of telephone calls including one from Ted Branson speaking from a golfing holiday in the Algarve. Turning to Oliver, Branson was reassuring. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll sort it out for you. I’ll ring you within a week.’ Two weeks later, Oliver was in despair. Branson had not called and her pregnancy was approaching the ten-week deadline allowed under the new Abortion Act. Oliver’s call to Paddington was again answered by Branson. ‘Oh gosh, I forgot. Did I say that? Come and see me immediately.’
Once again in his office, speaking again between telephone calls, Branson admitted there was a problem. ‘It’s so close to the deadline I can’t arrange it in the time. It normally takes three weeks.’ Oliver became visibly distressed. ‘But I could pull some strings,’ offered Branson, ‘if you would do a favour for me.’ The businessman’s proposition was simple.
‘BBC TV,’ he explained, ‘are featuring me in a programme called “Tomorrow’s People”. They want to feature my Student Advisory Centre. If you agree to be filmed visiting me, I’ll pull strings and fix up your abortion.’
‘But I don’t want anyone to know about me,’ said Oliver. ‘I want secrecy.’
‘Well, wear a disguise,’ suggested Branson.
‘Is there no other way?’ she asked.
‘There’s nothing else I can do. Think about it.’
Four days later, Oliver believed she had no option but to agree. ‘Great,’ said Branson. ‘Come to my office. We’ll be filmed and then we’ll go straight to Birmingham.’ Their destination was the Pregnancy Advisory Centre, a respectable organisation which had agreed to the filming. The documentary, celebrating Branson as a rising personality, was transmitted shortly afterwards. Oliver’s disguise, a wig, was ineffective. Branson appeared unaware of her embarrassment. His name, though, was increasingly mentioned among the lists of fashionable youth.
Benefiting from other people’s labour and ideas hardly matched the image of the sixties rebel but his style encouraged Branson’s trusting tenants and employees to literally plonk ideas on his bed. One morning, as he sat in bed with Mundy Ellis talking simultaneously on two telephones and reaching for papers, Tom Newman entered. Tall, long haired with a hint of cool mystery which attracted women, Newman was the stereotype rock guitarist: an uneducated rake immersed in drugs, sex and rock and roll. Bobbing on the fringes of the music world after graduating from bruising battles with bikers at the Ace Café, he relied upon others to pull his life together after fleeing his home and his father, a drunken Irish salmon poacher. Newman felt socially inferior to the younger Branson described by his girlfriend, an employee of Virgin Records, as ‘fascinating but tyrannical’.
‘Why don’t you build your own recording studio?’ asked Newman. ‘You could make a lot of money from that. I’ll run it.’
‘Sounds good,’ stuttered Branson as Mundy dropped a grape into his mouth. Quickly Branson warmed to the idea. He encouraged Newman’s trust. ‘He was the first bloke I ever spoke to who spoke posh,’ Newman told a friend. ‘But he was approachable, charming and keen.’
‘Let’s find a studio,’ Branson agreed, conjuring visions of a music empire.
Like generals in battle, putative tycoons also rely upon luck. In January 1971, Simon Draper, a twenty-one-year-old second cousin, introduced himself in South Wharf Road. ‘I’ve just arrived from South Africa,’ he smiled. Over breakfast, as Branson excitedly unveiled his ambitions to own a record label and a chain of record shops, Draper revealed his encyclopaedic knowledge of modern music. Even better for Branson, his unknown cousin, like Steve Lewis, was more interested in music than money. Branson, who confessed that his favourite tune that week was the theme from Borsalino, recognised that Draper’s arrival was a godsend. Draper was invited to join the empire and work with Nik Powell, a childhood friend of Branson’s and his neighbour in Surrey. In return for leaving university prematurely, Powell had negotiated with Branson a 40 per cent stake in Virgin Music which embraced Virgin Records.*
Powell was a perfect complement to Branson. Quiet, cerebral and unimpulsive, he imposed order on the chaos of Branson’s stream of initiatives, restrained his friend’s excesses and managed the ramshackle finances of a business not even incorporated within a company. Carefully set apart from other employees, Branson, Draper, Powell and a few other public school friends formed a tight cabal.
Powell’s organisation,
