Although my spelling is still sometimes poor, I have managed to overcome the worst of my difficulties through training myself to concentrate.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

Most people assume that a record shop's success lies in selling records. In fact, Virgin's success both in mail order and the record shops lay in skill at buying records.

And ever since then [I] have set up businesses basically out of frustration. I mean, I set up Virgin Atlantic with one second-hand 747 because I hated the experience of flying on other people's airlines. And I thought, you know, I could try to create the kind of airline that I'd like to fly on. And people liked it.

The best way forward is to give more people everywhere greater power to build their own destinies.

Running a business is making a difference in people's lives

Half the art of ballooning is to make your crashes so gentle that you can fool yourself into calling them landings.