RICHARD BRANSON

Right now I'm just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.

With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.

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.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

The funny thing is people won't let me pay for things. I'll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, 'Oh no, it's on the house.'

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn't really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won't make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa - and it's about getting a balance.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

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.

You never know with these things when you're trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.

I've been very lucky. I come from a very close family.

Lightning is something which, again, we would rather avoid.

Nobody's ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there's some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.

I think it's quite great to set yourself a big challenge, and then you've got another reason for keeping fit.

We've always had a pretty competitive and pretty ferocious battle with British Airways... It's lasted now about 14 years, and we're very pleased to have survived it.

There's nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.

Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.

We, we - as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

Well, we know that people in Australia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it's fun to be able to deliver it.

I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.

One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.

I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other - and we still are.

We're introducing separate rooms with double beds in all of our planes so people can actually go with their partner and have a proper night's sleep.