year s winners ukraine who can t stage it because of the war with russia. now on bbc news it is time for amol rajan interviewing richard branson. hi. yes. hello. my goodness. wow. the shy schoolboy who became a global celebrity. sir richard branson is a very british bundle of contradictions. the dyslexic who set up a student magazine, the record label founder who didn t listen to music, the 60s hippie who became a multi billionaire. today he s got his own island and his brand has dozens of companies to its name, from virgin atlantic to galactic. but after five decades in business, reinventing whole industries,
a psychiatrist chair, it s a bit like being in a psychiatrist chair me of course, i m nervous, but i see how you are in an hour. just to be clear. you ve not seen or approved the questions in advance. nothing s off the table, right? i m afraid. i m afraid that s the case. i ve got. no. you d be much less nervous if it wasn t the case if you google richard branson, the thing that comes up in the author search is net worth. i mean, people are obsessed with the fortunes of the rich and famous. it s very rude to ask a man how much he s worth. so i m not going to do that. so let me ask sid, how much did you lose through the pandemic? did you lose a lot of money personally in trying to save your companies? the answer is yes. i mean, obviously it cost us a big percentage of our net worth, maybe a billion and a half. and yeah, so there was a time where it really looked like we were going to lose everything. we had 50, 60 planes all on the ground at heathrow and gatwick and in sydney and melbou
business, you know, see how it goes. if it doesn t work out, try again until they succeed. and the young people from all around the uk who say to me, because they re not from london and they ve got strong accents and they re very paranoid about their accent, they may come from rural somerset or hull or mansfield, and they say that they re worried that if you sound like them, it s going to hold them back. honestly, will it hold them back? no, i really don t think so. anyway, my wife s glaswegian accent is half of what i found so attractive about the other half. i won t go into details of it. but anyway, i think honestly it shouldn t matter. i don t think it does generally matter. there may be some snooty british companies still left that that where it might make a difference. i doubt it. nice to meet you. good to see you. hello. how are you? have a great voyage for having us. yeah, richard. nice to meet you. this guy s a rock star. and is it any wonder? he s learnt from the best.
we sold shares in companies that were public, and that was one way we managed to find money and most jobs were saved as a result. but personally, i was fortunate in that our kids managed to get to the island and our grandkids got to the island. and so although i experienced maybe a couple of months of what people must feel when they re pretty low, and i never experienced that before my life. do you mean that for the first time in your life you were depressed? yeah, i was certainly certainly a little depressed. but, you know, talking about net worth, i mean, you know, one of the things i suppose, if i resent anything in life is the tag billionaire. i think people don t address you by your net worth they call you by your name. yeah. and what i ve spent my lifetime doing is building ventures that hopefully will make a really positive difference