How I persuaded Richard Branson to say yes
Back when I was a nobody, I made it my mission to get an interview with the Virgin mogul... and succeeded
Dear Jasper,
We’re back from Mallorca, which was a roaring success. It was glorious and sunny and blah blah blah (other peoples’ holiday stories are boring, I’m not going to do that to you) but probably the most interesting aspect was seeing Richard Branson again.
I’ve probably met and interviewed him more than 10 times by this point. We’ve developed a repertoire. This time he greeted you with a pat on the head, which I like to think was a Midas touch. I wouldn’t go as far as to say Richard and I are friends, but he could definitely pick me out of a line-up, which is good enough for me.
There’s an interesting story behind this.
It started long ago when I was a nobody, professionally speaking. I had moved to New York, against absolutely everyone’s advice, in hopes of becoming a journalist, having no qualifications, let alone a work visa, let alone a resident’s visa, let alone a plan of any sort. All I had was a tourist visa, two suitcases and a great deal of determination.
I’ll speed past the bit in which I was an illegal immigrant working in a bar and cut to the part where I did indeed manage to blag my first job as a journalist. It was for an obscure, now defunct iPad magazine that you certainly won’t have heard of. During one meeting, my boss announced that our next issue should be the ‘Brit Issue’, then bellowed: “Imagine if we had Richard Branson on the cover.’
Branson had long been a hero of mine (His Screw It, Let’s Do It is an excellent read), and, eager to impress, I made a bet with my boss that I could get him to do an interview with me. The whole office laughed.
But I had remembered a vague connection, you see.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Dear Jasper... to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.