Before Virgin came along, you were lucky enough to have a chicken dumped in your lap.

Richard Branson: I think that it’s maybe too soon to say, “What is Virgin beyond the Virgin brand?”

Virgin will mean different things to different people. I’d like to think we’ve transformed people’s way of traveling on planes. Before we started out 21 years ago, the experience was diabolical. You were lucky enough to have a chicken dumped in your lap, let alone having any entertainment system to watch. And let alone having a cabin crew person who actually smiled at you. I think that that’s one example where we came and we shook up an industry.

And other airlines – I think apart from American carriers – have moved forward with the times and have tried to catch up. And I think we’ve done that to quite a lot of industries.

And the rail industry, when we took it over 10 years ago, was worse than India. And we’ve now made it the best in Europe and something which British people can be proud of. And that’s our reason for being. We just love going into sectors where things are badly run and  seeing if we can really change them.

At the same time, we have 50,000 people at Virgin who want to make a real difference. And Virgin Unite is our charitable arm, and Virgin Unite is doing some wonderful things. And I think actually Virgin, one day, could be better known for what we can achieve through Virgin Unite than from actually what we’ve achieved in business. And you know, but that’s for another chapter. And we’ve got 20 or 30 years to prove that point.

Recorded on: July 5, 2007