Rochard branson6/6/2023 His sister Vanessa provides a classic description of humble-ish origins: “We weren’t brought up either super-broke or particularly rich.” Home video footage shows the Branson gaff, a country house with a considerable garden. After a summary of Branson’s first venture, the magazine Student, and how selling cut-price records through its classified pages led to the opening of the first Virgin Records store, we spool back to his childhood. The opening episode of Smith’s series skilfully gives us room to wonder whether this is something to be celebrated.īillionaires are frequently branded with a rags-to-riches backstory but, when we hear that they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, it is always instructive to look at how shiny those boots were in the first place. Here he is at 70, still risking everything, even his life. Branson, by reputation, is an inveterate risk-taker who has consistently rolled the dice on new ventures when he could have preserved what he already had. The sequence has significance beyond being an arrestingly intimate moment that looks good in a documentary. ![]() ![]() Articulating the bereavement that could befall his wife, children and grandchildren causes him to repeatedly break down in tears, spoiling the take. He is recording a video message for his loved ones, to be played in the event of him not making it in and out of the stratosphere alive. ![]() It is the summer of 2021 and, in his lovely sprawling villa on his private island in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands, Branson is preparing to take a trip into space. Or at least, it starts with Branson anticipating the end. B ranson (Sky Documentaries), director Chris Smith’s four-part biography of Richard Branson, starts at the end.
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