Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it's certainly not how the they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of 'discounted cash flows' and net' present values'.

A little humour is good for the soul - regardless of how old you may be.

The extraordinary thing about the record industry is how success can take off without warning.

Well, I think that there's a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you're likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

Perhaps my early problems with dyslexia made me more intuitive: when someone sends me a written proposal, rather than dwelling on detailed facts and figures I find that my imagination grasps and expands on what I read.

Perhaps, therefore, it is odd that if there is any one phrase that is guaranteed to set me off it's when someone says to me, 'OK, fine. You're the boss!' What irks me is that in 90% of such instances what that person is really saying is, 'OK, then, I don't agree with you, but I'll roll over and do it because you're telling me to. But if it doesn't work out I'll be the first to remind everyone that it wasn't my idea.'

Communication: the thing humans forgot when we invented words.