Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2008 | Page 39

INTERVIEW

He will have drunk his
entrepreneurial skills with his
mother’s milk.
Richard was not, she says,
an easy boy to bring up. At
school he wanted to be doing
things he shouldn’t be doing.
Finally he was allowed to leave
school because he wanted to
start a magazine. “He and his
little friend wrote to famous
people listed in Who’s Who,
asking for contributions. Some
answers came back saying
sorry, he died some years ago,
but others wrote very lovely
articles for his magazine. It
was very successful.”
The picture that emerges is
not of some jumped-up egotist,
but of someone with incredible
self-confidence. “Yes, that’s it,
you’re so right,” enthuses Eve.
“He knew what he wanted to
do and just went for it!”
Eve has watched Richard
“going for it” ever since. She
has seen the launch of every
dare-devil stunt and to calm
her nerves when he has been in
trouble, such as being lost at
sea during balloon flights, she
writes. “It was the only thing
that got me out of myself as a
mother,” she says. She is soon
to produce a book.
Her energy is unquenchable.
When she says Richard has
given her a job with one
of his charitable ventures I

imagine maybe she does a little
phone-bashing, sweet-talking
money out of wealthy
contacts. Her job actually
entails travelling to the
Atlas Mountains in Morocco
teaching crafts to the girls of
the villages which surround a
hotel Virgin owns. “Richard
doesn’t like to feel that Virgin
is making money out of the
hotel without giving something
back to the local villages. So I

www.wightfrog.com/islandlife

go and teach the girls to make
things, which we sell in the
hotel gift shop. I started with
three girls and now 40 turn
up every day. I’ve got a little
craft centre up there in the
mountains. I love it, love it!”
The extent of Richard
Branson’s charitable work
isn’t widely known, but that,
of course, is another attribute
taken from Eve’s careful
molding: to think of other

life

people. Indeed, as you spend
time with Eve Branson you
realise that far from being
frighteningly eccentric as a
mother, she ought to be writing
the definitive guide to raising
kids. When her blue-eyed
four-year-old didn’t turn up at
home she was frantic like any
mother – “I’d be locked up for
it today” – but she got what
she wanted. “It’s wonderful
having a fearless son.”

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