My mother always taught me never to look back in regret but to move on to the next thing. The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me. I have fun running all the Virgin businesses-so a setback is never a bad experience, just a learning curve.

You can create a business, choose a name, but unless people know about it you're not going to sell any products.

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.

Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that's what a number of us are trying to do.

If family or friends are unwell or ill - it's perhaps the only thing that really can make one feel vulnerable.

I was a risk-taker as a young man, and I don't regret it. I'm not adventurous in quite the same way now, but I still love the challenge of testing myself to the limits, flying around the world, or seeing if I can be the first to fly a balloon across the Atlantic, or trying to take people into space at an affordable price in an environmentally friendly way. I'll be going into space with three generations of my family!

There are quite a few things I've done that even I thought might have been one step too far. But if you are willing to make a fool of yourself and make people smile, as long as you do it with a sense of fun, you can get away with it.