Virgin on the hype

I was one of Richard Branson's first customer's back in 1970 when he launched the Virgin mail order record business. I'd just started my first paid job (a weekend and school holiday milk round starting before 6 am at the age of 13) and I was an avid reader of NME (New Musical Express). A couple of mail order businesses starting discounting record prices which was music to my ears.

When he started his first shop one of my school friends dangled the Virgin bag over his desk at school to make a statement - or perhaps an invitation to change his status! I'm still hoping to advertise the Virgin name by wearing it on my chest in the London Marathon next year but where has all the fizz gone.

Do you remember when Richard Branson launched Virgin Cola? It was going to rival Coke and Pepsi if you believed all the hot air. It went completely flat a couple of years ago when Asda, the last supermarket to stock it, removed it from its shelves with as much fanfare as the removal of the chief executive's blog on the Steam Packet website.

My heart's been bleeding for Sir Richard in the last couple of weeks.

According to him. the reason why Virgin Trains should have been awarded the West Coast Rail Franchise was because when he first bid nobody believed his business plan was realistic yet he achieved it (and was rewarded with millions of pounds of dividends that he was able to pay himself out of the compensation that Network Rail paid Virgin  for failing to deliver a track that was not good enough to run his trains at full belt).

And the reason why he thinks that First Group should not get the franchise? Because nobody believes that they can deliver their business plan to grow the rail business even further. I love irony as much I much as I loved that John Kongos album that was delivered by the postman.

I suspect the other rail operators will outlive Virgin trains by concentrating on running railways rather than spinning stories. Like the time the Virgin train driver was a hero after a derailment - he was actually powerless to do anything after the train lost the tracks.

And the other virgin record mail order company outlived Virgin but not by long. How many people remember that Comet began selling discounted records through NME and Sounds? The business was sold for £2 last year - not much more than I paid for my first mail order record from them.