Branson. Tom Bower

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       4 Frustrations

      ‘I can’t find the bathroom,’ explained Richard Branson. ‘Could you come to my bedroom and help me find it?’ At about 2 a.m. in early February 1982 in the Hotel Esmeralda in Paris, Branson had just telephoned the nearby bedroom occupied by Suzie McKenzie. The married journalist was puzzled. After all, Branson had occupied the same room for two nights and over dinner at Juliens, a fish restaurant, he had boasted, while noisily slurping a bowl of mussels, ‘I’ve never lost a night’s sleep in my life.’ She paused. Branson’s breathing was suggestive. He had not been as much fun as she had imagined. Certainly he was exceptional – levering each mussel out of its shell with a soup spoon was bizarre – but he remained enigmatic rather than engaging. ‘I’ll be right over,’ she said.

      ‘Here it is,’ she announced. ‘It’s behind this door.’ McKenzie smiled. Branson, she decided, was certainly not her type. She walked out. Branson was irked. Poaching McKenzie, he had thought, would be no different from the capture of Kristen and Joan. But attracting intelligent women, he regretted, was difficult. Sophisticated women like McKenzie castigated him as unimpressive and sexually unenticing. ‘A vacuum,’ she later declared. Branson found McKenzie’s disdain inexplicable since admiring secretaries and rock groupies swooned about ‘Richard’s genius’, and more journalists than ever were calling for interviews.

      Branson had spotted McKenzie at a party which he hosted in early 1981 at his parents’ new house in Surrey. His guests were the staff of Event, a new London listings magazine which he had launched to compete with Time Out. Ignoring Joan’s reprimands about eating with his fingers, drinking other people’s wine and pulling cigarettes from guests for a puff, he tried especially hard to ingratiate himself with his new employees. Dressed elegantly, McKenzie had been standing near the pool. Branson manoeuvred himself nearby. Her splash was loud and his laughter was electrifying. Pulling her outstretched hand, he helped his victim on to the side. Fiercely, he rubbed the woman dry. Some would even swear that he screamed, ‘Oh you are saucy!’ as he joyfully rubbed her breasts and thighs.

      Ignoring her embarrassment, Branson had invited the journalist to co-host business lunches on the houseboat. As she served lumpy minced meat and warm Hock, Branson encouraged his visitors dressed in suits to believe that McKenzie was his girlfriend, if only to deflect attention from their demands for money and their complaints about his business ethics. Branson had received writs from Mike Oldfield and Sting, and was embroiled in an acrimonious dispute with Carol Wilson, Virgin’s successful director of a music company, who accused Branson of not signing an agreed employment contract. ‘I don’t like this Sting litigation,’ Branson confessed to McKenzie. ‘I feel bad about it.’ He was baffled, he continued, why Dire Straits, the Boomtown Rats and Bob Geldof had all rejected Virgin’s contracts. Surely, he asked rhetorically, they should have been susceptible because he was the amiable alternative to the dull suits. But if Branson’s admissions of failure were designed to inspire McKenzie’s sympathy he was to be disappointed. McKenzie felt she was the target of Branson’s manipulation. But she had misjudged the man. Despite the setbacks, Branson could still conjure success.

      Branson’s rejection of Nik Powell’s arguments one year earlier had proved justified. Virgin’s profits in 1981, after selling over two million albums of Phil Collins and the Human League, were £1.5 million compared to the previous year’s £900,000 loss. His reviving fortunes encouraged the very self-confidence which alienated many of the journalists whom he had hired for Event.

      ‘You’re all bluster, and you don’t listen,’ Pearce Marchbank accused Branson. The anger of Event’s editor caused the Duende to pitch on the motionless canal. ‘You’re a rock and roll egomaniac who doesn’t understand that magazines take time.’ Six weeks after the launch of the new London listings magazine, Event’s circulation was declining. Branson’s reductions of the budget had reduced the magazine’s size and consequently advertisers were deserting. Branson was unwilling to concede defeat. ‘You’re bringing Virgin down,’ Branson griped to Marchbank. ‘Fire forty staff. Now.’ His second attempt to publish a magazine as a prelude to becoming a media tycoon was souring.

      Like so many publicity-seeking businessmen, Branson had hoped that Event would bestow glamour, status and influence. Money, he believed, could buy power. A vicious strike in 1981 at Time Out, a unique London listings magazine owned and edited by Tony Elliott, a former friend, had prompted Branson to launch Event to both improve his fortune and social status.

      Tony Elliott’s staff, anti-Establishment journalists resentful of the proprietor’s right to manage, had for weeks in early 1981 successfully prevented Time Out’s publication. Branson, still irritated by the failure of Student magazine, welcomed Elliott’s predicament as his good fortune. Elliott had been invited to lunch at Mill End, Branson’s new country home near the manor in Oxfordshire. As the lunch drifted into the afternoon and then into the evening, Branson tried to lull his target into a false sense of security. His clumsy social performance, scruffy clothes and appalling table manners, he hoped, would lure Elliott to underestimate his intentions. ‘Let me buy 50 per cent of Time Out,’ Branson offered. Elliott smiled weakly. The predator, he sighed, did not understand. Time Out’s staff would dislike Branson even more than him. Branson was suburban. He was no rebel. His pride was to be the anti-intellectual, a trader in the market and a hero for the aspiring working class. He would make matters worse. ‘No thanks,’ replied Elliott later that night. ‘Bollocks,’ muttered Branson, unable to conceal the hurt. In his mind, business was like the game of Monopoly he played as a child where he customarily placed, against the rules, two hotels on both Mayfair and Park Lane. Any opponent landing on his property was compelled to surrender immediately. Similarly, the pleasure of Elliott’s pain was desired immediately.

      ‘If he won’t join me, I’ll beat him,’ Branson decided. Copying Elliott’s idea was effortless and enticing Time Out’s staff was the most obvious way to crash fast into the market. There was no hesitation. Pearce Marchbank, Time Out’s designer, was his first recruit. ‘I want to be editor,’ stipulated Marchbank. Since Marchbank could hasten the recruitment of other Time Out staff, Branson agreed. ‘I want Event ready to go in twelve weeks,’ Marchbank was ordered. The only hint of interference during those weeks, Marchbank acknowledged, was the prudent delivery of cocaine to keep the staff awake, albeit without Branson’s knowledge.

      Ten weeks later, on 18 September 1981, Branson was puzzled. Elliott’s fox had outsmarted Branson’s lumbering hounds. After locking out the strikers, Time Out was relaunched with Mel Brooks on the cover, identical to Event’s planned first edition due to appear a few days later. ‘He’s stolen our idea,’ moaned the advocate of competition, before rallying to tell John Varnom, ‘Fuck. We’re going to win.’

      Without warning, on publication day, two weeks later, Branson arrived in Event’s editorial offices in Portobello Road with television crews and his growing entourage. Event was not simply another magazine to earn money for a businessman but Branson’s celebrity launch pad. ‘Here’s my editor,’ he beamed. ‘My magazine will be Number One this week,’ he purred holding up the slick, hundred-page colour magazine. СКАЧАТЬ