The vision behind the quick, efficient build was to get the hospital up and running to start treating people at once without hanging around discussing plans and issues. We just raised the money and did it. Our idea was to try to build in a much more efficient and portable way than has been done in the past, using as a model a method that converts the ubiquitous ‘charity’ into a sustainable business model – that is, it will ultimately become self-running and pay for itself. I feel that helping people towards self-sufficiency where possible gives them more hope and confidence and can take them out of a cycle of poverty and despair. We used as a blueprint Hugo Templeman’s Centre, where he has helped HIV/AIDS patients who are being treated to set up small businesses around the clinic, so they can make a living and have some dignity. Using Hugo’s model, we agreed that HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB would all be treated free; but there would be a charge for basic healthcare and less urgent treatment where people could afford it. It was important, though, for the people to know that we would never turn anyone away. Our aim ideally is to take that as a model and scale it up across South Africa, then as many other places as possible where there is real need through Virgin Unite. Creating sustainable businesses frees ‘charity’ money to be used elsewhere and effectively stretches it further.
It was a few days later that I got the welcome news that scientist Stephen Hawking had come one step closer to his dream of going into space with us. On 27 April, shortly after his sixty-fifth birthday, with the help of Peter Diamandis and a team of doctors and nurses, he finally experienced zero gravity on board a commercial 727 jet that had been converted for weightless training flights – or what NASA astronauts-in-training call the ‘Vomit Comet’. Just to make sure he would be all right, he took a motion sickness pill just before his flight. He was the first person with a disability to enjoy the experience – and enjoy it he did. The video beamed back to us on Earth showed a wide smile on his face as he left the confines of his wheelchair and floated free for the first time. ‘It was amazing … I could have gone on and on,’ he said after landing. ‘Space, here I come.’
I can’t know exactly how he felt at having achieved the first part of his dream – only he could possibly know that – but I know what it feels like to float at zero-g. On first leaving the gravity of Earth, the feeling of weightlessness travels slowly through the body until, suddenly, instant bliss fills you. Everyone who has ever known it agrees that it is ‘pure, sheer ecstasy’ – but words alone cannot describe the pleasure. Having passed the test with flying colours, Professor Hawking was now ready to be a passenger aboard a Virgin Galactic space flight.
Not everything would go as smoothly, or even as joyfully, as flying at zero-g. Eighteen months earlier, on 11 September 2005, an interesting opportunity came my way. I was in New York for the US Open tennis finals, when I attended a lunch meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel with Gordon McCallum, head of Virgin’s management company, Simon Duffy, CEO of the UK cable television company NTL, and Shai Weiss, NTL’s director of operations – who now runs Virgin Fuels. Simon and Shai had flown in that morning for the meeting. It was the culmination of months of secret negotiations between us to create a new powerhouse media company in the UK to rival Sky. Our codename for the proposed union was Project Baseball; like a baseball pitch it had four bases (a ‘quadplay’) with a diamond in the middle. The diamond was the value to be unlocked by our merger.
Originally, NTL/Telewest had asked if we would license the brand to them, but I thought we could do a lot better. In discussions with Stephen Murphy, our chief executive, I said, ‘Virgin Mobile is sitting here with 4.5 million customers and a lot of rights in terms of content. The only way I can see this working is to integrate Virgin Mobile into the new business.’ I didn’t just want to do a rebranding deal, I wanted to have equity. As I saw it, they were going to have to rename and rebrand anyway – and Virgin had by far the better image.
Simon and Gordon agreed. This was that NTL and Telewest – the UK’s biggest cable providers – should combine together with Virgin Mobile, to rebrand the new group with Virgin’s name and very successful image. Together we would have some ten million customers, which would enable us to do wonderful things. The first selling point would be to launch ‘quadplay’ – that is, we would offer a ‘four for £40 service’ in one package of digital TV, broadband, telephone and mobile telephone. I liked the fun and business coup in this unusual reverse take-over. NTL/Telewest was effectively buying Virgin Mobile for a very large sum – but I would become the largest shareholder and stamp our name and logo on the entire company. I immediately saw it as a way of unlocking the huge potential in Virgin Mobile and, at the same time, having the fun of becoming a major competitor in the market place. I had tried before, when I had bid for Channel 5 (now Five) and knew how difficult it could be. It took eighteen months to fine-tune the proposal before a fifteen-page summary was sent to me early in 2007. Obviously, the structure of the deal took many more sheets of paper, but I have always preferred summaries: I am able to see at a glance whether a deal is for me or not, by cutting to the chase and skimming the main points.
During the long months of negotiation, we had managed to keep the deal secret by working through only one bank and not even telling Charles Gurassa, the independent chairman at Virgin Mobile – but ultimately it leaked. The Sunday Telegraph wrote: ‘James Murdoch is going to choke on his muesli when he hears about this. It’s going to be the battle of the brands – Virgin vs. Sky.’
T-Mobile, who were involved with Virgin Mobile, had a change of control provision in their deal with us. Obviously, with the leak about to go public, they had to be told. They weren’t told everything – such as the NTL/Telewest proposal – but someone there guessed. It ended up with Gordon urgently calling Charles Gurassa and saying, ‘There’s something you need to know …’
We formally became Virgin Media on 6 February 2007. Part of our strategy in order to give us content was to identify and then make a bid for ITV. It was well known that ITV was struggling in the market place, but it had a good base for us to make and buy in content. We thought we had a good chance, until we came up against quite a big player in the form of Rupert Murdoch – who owns more than 50 per cent of all UK media, from TV to newspapers. I knew we would end up locking horns with Sky, but I underestimated the speed with which Murdoch moved. His son, James, runs Sky, but there is little doubt that his strings are pulled by Murdoch senior. I get on well with both Murdochs, though I am aware of how ruthless they can be in business. Our bid for ITV suddenly fell apart on 26 April when Rupert Murdoch stepped in and bought a large slice of ITV shares at well over their value. As a result, Sky shares immediately lost £150 million in value but they didn’t mind that to stop us becoming too powerful a competitor. I believe that what they did under competition law was unfair and illegal and we asked the competition authorities to adjudicate on whether Murdoch could buy those ITV shares or not. Some of the competitive reaction undertaken by Sky was also somewhat unexpected. We had three million homes against Sky’s nine million homes, but, cleverly, Murdoch senior had tried to paint a picture that I was portraying myself as a David vs Goliath, whereas – according to him – it was Goliath vs Goliath. I believed that the two Murdochs and I have quite a lot of respect for each other, but the game, as Sherlock Holmes said, was afoot.
Until then, Sky and the new entity, Virgin Media, had a symbiotic relationship, in that we had channels on each other’s networks. We paid quite a lot of money to Sky for their basic channels; but, with no warning, suddenly they asked us for a lot more money than the market value, or than we were willing to pay, because those channels were declining in numbers of viewers. At the same time, they decided to reduce what they paid us to use our network by tens of millions of pounds, despite an increase in viewers of our programming. As a result our customers lost some of Sky’s programming, but we were eventually able to settle the issue at the end of 2008.
I hadn’t been at Ulusaba very long when I became
more fully aware that animals know no boundaries or frontiers. Some people talk of ‘Kenyan elephants’ and ‘South African lions’, but the reality is that most animals have always followed their old hunting and feeding paths, regardless of man-made borders. Like migrating birds, they are gypsies, going where they will. It is only when they come up against the needs of people to grow crops or to build towns that the problems develop.
Africa was divided up like a pack of cards in the Victorian era, when European colonialism was at its height. Artificial political borders cut across tribal lands and split clans; as well as across animals’ migration routes, fragmenting and destroying ecosystems and biodiversity. It was to try to right this damage that national parks were established. However, most national parks are exactly that – national and within borders. Peace Parks, under the guidance of Dr Anton Rupert, went to the next stage. Together with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Mandela, Dr Rupert set up the Peace Parks Foundation. Their dream was to once again create an Africa where wildlife can roam freely across international borders. Co-operation between countries would allow eco-tourists to come, bringing in money, work and prosperity to some abjectly poor people and regions. The people, animals and the land of Africa would all benefit.
According to Dr Rupert, ‘We believe in the philosophy that there needs to be harmony between humans and nature. Africa without fences. We dream of ancient migration trails trodden deep by an instinct that time has never contained. We dream of a wilderness where the elephant roams and the roar of the lion shatters the night.’
Ulusaba is within the great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) that stretches across the entire area of southern Africa, from coast to coast. But I was very attracted to the idea of the Peace Parks when I learned that they will eventually straddle the globe, taking in some of the most beautiful and remote places, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and east to west around the globe – some 112 countries in all are involved. But although the Parks are without borders, every country retains absolute sovereignty of the part of the Park that falls within its territory. It’s an amazing achievement and I loved the concept when Mandela first mentioned it to me.
In due course, in January 2006 Professor Willem Van Riet approached me to join Club 21. ‘21’ stands for those interested in peace and development through conservation in the twenty-first century. Each member of the club makes a minimum contribution of one million dollars. It’s a lot of money – but I agreed with Dr Rupert’s witty quip that, ‘Conservation without money is just Conversation.’
But all was not wonderful in paradise. The reality, as I found, was the amount of land set aside for wildlife in Africa is tiny. Farms encroach, poachers poach and in some areas – such as a beautiful area of Mozambique – there’s no game left because of civil war. But in South Africa’s Kruger Park, there’s too much game. The more I got involved, the more I realised how crucial the work of the Peace Parks is. One of the most exciting breakthroughs was the removal of the border fence between South Africa and Mozambique. Now the over-populated elephants of the Kruger can move freely into Mozambique and breathe life into its deserted game parks.
Things moved at great speed. By April 2007, I was flying to Kenya to finalise an initiative to lease land from the traditional home of the Masai. The plan was to pay them more money than they currently got from farming, to protect the land as well as the beautiful migrations of the wildebeest – one of the five wonders of the world – and to then train the Masai to work in game lodges, as rangers, so they continue to work on their own land. It helps to improve the environment, gives them jobs, and protects wild animals. I think that some countries realise that what they have is absolutely priceless; and this is especially true of Africa, where they have to battle with the climate as well as with famine, war and disease. Fortunately, African governments and the African people themselves are coming to see that the game and scenery is beyond value. Once you lose it, you’re never going to get it back. At least 10 per cent of our profits have been put aside to invest in Africa and to create African jobs. We’ve set up a national airline for the Nigerians, which West Africa desperately needed, as well as health clubs, mobile phone companies and finance companies, together employing some 5,000 Africans.
As I stood in the steamy heat of Kenya, though, breathing in the rich smells of the Tropics, I mentally braced myself for the sub-zero temperatures I was about to experience on my next challenge – which was to take some time off to trek across a part of the Arctic Circle with my son, Sam, and husky dog teams. Sam had already been training for a week when I arrived from Kenya – which wasn’t the best place to adapt myself to Arctic conditions! – to join Will Steger’s 1,200-mile Global Warming 101 expedition to help alert the world to what global warming was doing to the Arctic and the Inuit and the world as a whole. By the time I arrived – hotfoot (almost literally!) from Africa, to travel with the team from the Clyde River to journey’s end at the Iglulik – global warming rapidly became one of the last things on my mind. The Inuits, who were our guides, keenly observed and pointed out to us some depressing changes in the permanent ice cover.
But first I had to brave the welcoming feast. A tarpaulin was laid out in the middle of the village hall. Three frozen stag heads, cut off from their frozen bodies that lay next to them, stared out at us. Chunks of raw frozen meat cut from one of the stags awaited us. Large frozen fish lay in a row. This was the feast the Inuit had laid on for us at Clyde River to help us on our way.
The next day, we headed down from Clyde Fjord – a glaciated valley that was flooded by sea water. It was awesome; certainly one of the wonders of the world. I felt completely dwarfed with our tiny sledges in the middle of this great fjord. It was a beautiful wilderness, one I had never experienced from the ground before – although I had sailed serenely overhead similar terrain in a balloon. I was also conscious of the fact that my ancestor, the man known as Scott of the Antarctic, had walked through far worse conditions to the South Pole.
Every mile we covered was through the most beautiful scenery I had ever seen, with blue ice and soaring sea cliffs; but Theo, our guide, also pointed out other disturbing signs. As the sea is getting warmer the killer whales are moving north in ever increasing numbers. The eider ducks and phalaropes are now staying north all year round instead of just the summer. Even in the dark of winter, when there’s just two hours of sunlight, they stay. The ground squirrel that used to be found 250 miles south of Theo’s village Iglulik is now flourishing around Iglulik. They are getting new species of birds. Even the robin has arrived for the first time.
Theo said, ‘When we first heard about global warming we Inuits thought it was good news. Our kids would have warmer winters. Now we know it’s not good news. It is changing the ecosystem altogether. This beautiful world we live in is going to disappear.’
I wrote some interesting things in my journal. Here’s one especially notable entry: ‘My last night was particularly cold. We all have a piss bottle in our beds due to it being too cold to get out in the night. I didn’t do the top of the bottle up tightly enough. Woke up to find my sleeping bag consisted of frozen piss. I told the story the next day and everyone generally agreed – since the Inuits don’t allow alcohol – that I was the only person to get pissed on this trip!’
I managed to do a satellite telephone link-up and talked to my dad. Dad had spent a lot of the War in the Sahara desert, fighting Rommel. It can be very cold in the desert at night. After I had described my adventures with the frozen bottle, Dad said dryly, ‘In the War we’d fill our hot water bottles with tea so we could keep warm at night and have a cuppa in the morning.’ It was a good thing that I didn’t confuse his story with mine.
Seeing Sam in his element, easily able to keep up with the fittest in the party – equally at home amongst the Inuit as he is amongst Africans or on the islands of the Caribbean where he has been largely brought up – made me see how very grown up and capable he had become. It’s always an evocative
and poignant moment when the older generation looks at the younger one and sees them catching up, or overtaking. Sam and I have avoided the subject of if he would or would not run Virgin one day. It gets very involved because I am still having a great deal of fun and, even though I have been working hard since I was fifteen, I don’t see retirement looming, not even on the far horizon. I also have to consider that Sam wants to prove himself and that there are plenty of his own things he wants to do; and Holly, of course, has never veered from her dreams of becoming a doctor. Recently, she qualified and is now working as a houseman in a big London hospital. As well as attending music college – he plays good guitar – Sam spent some four months helping with the relaunch of Virgin Media, which he enjoyed. Some of our businesses, like Virgin Media, have a youthful image and, as I head towards sixty, I have to consider that as well. I am aware that a recent survey we did on the Virgin brand gratifyingly showed that it was the Number One most popular brand in the UK; but also shows that amongst young people it was losing its popularity slightly. If I am honest, I think that’s a reflection of my age. Time moves on and, therefore, having a younger person in the public eye at some stage would help, though it’s not as important at the moment with things like Virgin Money and Virgin Trains.
Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way Page 50
