'EVERY DECADE I'VE BEEN ALIVE THE WORLD HAS GOT BETTER'

Britain's most famous entrepreneur Richard Branson is full of good vibes — including wanting to give away his billions, praising London to the skies and solving the world's woes

- BY MICHAEL ODELL

So what does a billionaire business tycoon eat for breakfast? I'm sitting with Sir Richard Branson in his spanking new, 120-room Virgin Hotels London-Shoreditch, where I imagine they served him something delicious this morning. I am wrong.

“I went to E Pellicci in Bethnal Green, it’s a proper old East End restaurant,” he beams. “The welcome you get and the size of the breakfast is incredible. You should go there — 84-year-old Maria Pellicci still runs the kitchen — but you'll need to go to one of our Virgin Active gyms afterwards.”

Looking svelte in a T-shirt, jeans, sports jacket and trainers, Branson doesn't look like he overindulges often. But the 74-year-old's breakfast habits do sound odd.

“I got carried away and I was dancing on one of the tables,” he reports.

Welcome to the upbeat world of Britain’s most famous businessman. We are meeting for coffee in Hidden Grooves, the bar of the new hotel. Sure, it's another product in the brand portfolio which includes an airline (Virgin Atlantic), spaceships (Virgin Galactic) and which, at various points, has embraced everything from gyms to banks, trains, cola and even condoms.

But Hidden Grooves feels personal. It boasts shelves of vinyl for customers to play on the stereo but also memorabilia from Branson's own past. He started Virgin records on a houseboat called the Duende which is still moored near Warwick Avenue Tube (you can rent it for £5,200 a month). Virgin eventually became the biggest independent record company in the world (until Branson sold it to fund his epic legal battle with British Airways in 1992) and the evidence is here.

“The picture over there is of me taking Janet Jackson up in a hot air balloon. I told her if she didn’t sign with Virgin I'd use her as ballast,” he chuckles. “Her first album sold 20 million copies so I was very glad she chose us.”