While he'd love to sit down and chat with you all, there's just not enough hours in the day. So we've asked Richard some of your most popular questions, to save you writing in!
Hi Richard. So, how did you first get started in business? What was your first success?
The very first thing I did that was a success was Student Magazine. I was a teenager at the time and we operated from a London basement. By the summer of 1967 the magazine started to take off and had a circulation of over 50,000 copies an issue. All of us working on the project felt like we were students, living away from home in a rented basement with a constant flow of people in and out of the project. It was a very exciting time. Inspired by that, in 1969 we decided to develop a mail order record company.
How many times have you tried to break records? Are you some sort of adrenaline junkie?!
Well, I've always liked a challenge! I've been involved in a number of world record breaking attempts since 1985. My first success was in 1986 with my boat "Virgin Atlantic Challenger II". I wanted to rekindle the spirit of the Blue Riband by crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the fastest ever recorded time. A year later I crossed the same ocean, by hot air balloon this time. The "Virgin Atlantic Flyer" was not only the first hot-air balloon to cross the Atlantic but was also the largest balloon ever at 2.3 million cubic feet. It reached speeds in excess of 130 miles per hour (209 k/ph).
In January 1991, I crossed the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Arctic Canada at the furthest distance of 6,700 miles. Again, this broke all existing records. The balloon measured 2.6 million cubic feet with speeds of up to 245 miles per hour.
Between 1995 and 1998 I made a number of attempts to circumnavigate the globe by balloon with Per Lindstrand and Steve Fossett. In late 1998 we made a record breaking flight from Morocco to Hawaii but unfortunately, our dream of a global flight was shattered by bad weather… and then a Swiss team successfully circumnavigated the globe in early 1999. So if all that makes me an adrenaline junkie, then yes, guilty as charged.