Book Review - Losing my Virginity - Richard Branson

Losing My Virginity: The Autobiography, by Richard Branson

I love reading biographies, Real people often have much more interesting lives than that of fictional characters. 

I have held Virgin in high esteem for as long as i can remember. I think it was comfortable trains that clinched it. Then in 2009 when Zavvi collapsed. A close relative of mine was working in a Virgin Media outlet, in one of the Zavvi stores. At that time most Virgin Media shops were located as outlets inside Zavvi stores. Virgin Media could have made masses of people redundant on Christmas Eve 2009, whilst they found alternative locations for there stores across the UK. Instead they kept paying there staff and helped them find alternative work, whilst they opened new shops. She sat home for a good few months, until she was needed at a local store. This is in stark contrast to how my employer was treating me at the time, and how many others i knew were being treated as they were being made redundant, or just generally squeezed. I have always told her how lucky she is to work for a company that has some respect for its staff. She does not listen (probably as she does not have much experience of the alternative) and still complains about work.

Losing My Virginity: The Autobiography book covers Richard Branson's Life up to 2007. Starting as a child and then how he started his first business, creating a student magazine, called 'Student'. I think it is a bit strange that somebody would drop out of school and start a magazine aimed at students, as he was no longer at school or in any formal training, but that seems to be Richard Branson all over.  From this magazine sprang Virgin, first selling mail order records and then as a shop and later record company. In the first few years he seems to have started most of his adventures on a shoestring/fantasy budget from loans, and seemed to be constantly juggling various loads and overdrafts to finance his business. This is something as a wannabe entrepreneur that scares the hell out of me and in my mind i am not sure i could ever do this. When Richards and Virgin were in financial trouble, he always took to expanding his business to create more money to satisfy the banks. Which is a strategy which seemed to have worked well. Until he ran into British Airways who gave him a run for is money over his airline Virgin Atlantic, he ended up having to sell off the music company to keep the Airline running. Selling off the music company gave him enough money to do what he pleased, with out having to answer to the banks. At which point he seems to have gone into entrepreneurial overdrive.

I found the start and middle of the book very interesting, but i admit i started to flag a bit towards the end. The last 1/4 of the book seemed to be a summing up exerciser and i think this has come from extending it after it had been finished a few to many times. In fact the last part of the book, where he spends most his time talking about all the charity work he has been doing could really just have been written into one chapter, which would have had more impact, instead of boring the reader.