I ALWAYS used to have a lot of time for Richard Branson when I was a teenager and spent hours at a time in various branches of his Virgin Megastores.

There was never any hard sell or pressure to buy, they were just great places to hang out with your mates.

Also, when it came to buying a vinyl record, the prices were invariably reasonable and the sales were great.

As he became more and more successful, Branson appeared to be the coolest and savviest businessman on the planet, using his enormous wealth to embark on epic trans-Atlantic journeys via balloon and powerboat in pursuit of world records because of his competitive nature and desire to build the Virgin brand into a world beater.

To his enormous credit, it worked an absolute treat.

In order to understand Branson, it is worth reflecting on how it all started in earnest.

He wanted to have his own record label and chain of record shops and had the extraordinary good fortune to meet a hugely talented but painfully introverted young multi-instrumentalist by the name of Mike Oldfield.

Branson subsequently sorted out the instruments Oldfield required to perfect his masterpiece, Tubular Bells, including Spanish guitar, glockenspiel, timpani and tin whistle. The bells only came later.

At the time no one else would touch Oldfield with a bargepole but Branson, himself only 19 at the time, was prepared to take a punt even though when completed Tubular Bells had no vocals whatsoever other than “Master of Ceremonies” Vivian Stanshall’s spoken interjections as he introduces the different instruments.

Nobody gave Tubular Bells a cat in hell’s chance of success when it was released in 1973 but somehow it captured the public zeitgeist.

After its release it was helped immeasurably by famed disc jockey John Peel playing it regularly and in its entirety on his late night BBC Radio One show.

An excerpt of the music was also used sparingly in the horror film The Exorcist which helped spread its word of mouth allure.

It would help make both of them millionaires with more than 15 million copies sold to date and it continues to sell tens of thousands of copies each year to this day.

Unlike Oldfield, Branson loved the publicity and the fame and has always happily been the “face” of the Virgin brand, toothy grin and goatee beard ubiquitous.

It seemed he could do no wrong. He was the man with the Midas touch.

But of course, for an entrepreneur like Branson, Tubular Bells was never going to be enough.

He became known as the man who signed the Sex Pistols, another shrewd venture which gave his rapidly expanding business a welcome shot in the arm.

By the time Virgin became the biggest independent record label in the world, Branson was set fair.

Other ventures followed... Virgin Holidays, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Mobile... although he did sell his music interests to EMI for £500 million in 1992 to keep his airline a viable concern.

Trains were next on the agenda as franchises became available following the dissolution of British Rail and now, just like Buzz Lightyear, he plans to go to infinity and beyond via his commercial space travel business, Virgin Galactica.

From a business perspective, recent times have not been so kind, culminating in the decision to pull Virgin out of Gatwick Airport, a move which will cost thousands of jobs, particularly here in Sussex.

Branson himself has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about that decision and he has, unusually, come in for plenty of criticism, particularly as his personal wealth is more or less limitless.

At least when he does find time to reflect, he can do so in the splendour of Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, which he owns.

Branson’s business philosophy is simple, as he explained: “I suppose the secret to bouncing back is not only to be unafraid of failures but to use them as motivational and learning tools.

“There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes as long as you don’t make the same ones over and over again.”

Well, you can’t argue with that and neither can you argue that his intentions outside business are honourable. He is a philanthropist and has voiced his fears over climate change despite founding one of the world’s most successful airlines.

Sir Richard as he now is will no doubt bounce back and it is to be hoped his airline will too. I wonder if he still listens to Tubular Bells?