Home Top

'You're FIRED!' Trump's top adviser exits campaign amid Megyn Kelly 'Bloodgate' row and says The Donald is 'losing grip on reality'
Hero Delta pilots make a BLIND emergency landing after baseball-sized hail storm cracked their windshield and damaged the nose
Apple to unveil its new generations of iPhone and iPad on September 9 in hope of reviving flagging stock value
'I feel like this just happened to me': Mike Brown's father leads a march through Ferguson to mark the eve of his son's death
Banned Trump says: I was talking about Megyn Kelly's NOSE! Tycoon declares war on 'politically correct fools' who kicked him out of GOP conference over 'Bloodgate'
One of Cecil's cubs has been killed by a rival male after the lion was slaughtered last month - sparking fears the survivors may have just days to live
Could Google steal the Presidency? Voters are far more likely to pick candidates whose name appears at the top of a search, study shows
Giant Florida alligator drags swimmer underwater and rips off her arm at the elbow - stopping only when nearby canoeist beats it with a paddle
Officers charged in death of Freddie Gray say that he 'had history of injuring himself to collect insurance money'
'I cannot lawfully send my children away from the United States': Kelly Rutherford refuses to fly siblings Helena and Hermes back to father in Monaco
The amusement park where alligators are the only guests: Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, Six Flags New Orleans stands empty and abandoned
Say goodbye to cramped knees: 'Legroom adjustable' plane seat moves backwards and forwards according to height of the traveller
British soldiers were used as human guinea pigs and tested with anthrax and the PLAGUE by scientists who also released dangerous bacteria on the London transit system
Playboy F1 legend Juan Manuel Fangio's body is exhumed 20 years after his death in bid to determine paternity of two men in their seventies claiming to be his sons
New York bureaucrats fire city employee for missing 18 months of work... because he died of cancer in 2014
REVEALED: Families of slain victims in Dark Knight massacre WALKED OUT of Colorado courtroom on hearing Holmes had avoided death sentence
Bad handwriting lands Illinois dad with $218 tow truck fine and battle with tow company
Gucci sisters sell their dad's spectacular $45m Fifth Avenue apartment, 20 years after he was killed in hit ordered by his wife
American soldier dies in attack on NATO base in Afghanistan as worst suicide bombings in years kill more than 50 people
The secret to ISIS's success: Over 100 former Saddam Hussein-era officers run jihadi group's military and intelligence operations in Iraq and Syria
British jihadi's VJ Day plot to bomb the Queen in Central London: Police and MI5 in race against time to foil Boston Marathon-style IED 'spectacular' next Saturday
Former Soviet tank commander who converted to Islam after fighting in Afghanistan is found guilty of Taliban terror charges by US court
Obama can't curb his enthusiasm for golf: President kicks off his luxury vacation by playing a round with Seinfeld creator Larry David
Joe Biden will spend week-long retreat deciding whether to run for President as he continues to mourn his son Beau

The trouble with Ricky by Eve Branson (aged 91): After a large Bloody Mary, a call to arms for OAPs and a riotous account of bringing up Branson... So THAT's where he gets it from

Published: 16:03 EST, 8 August 2015 | Updated: 18:42 EST, 8 August 2015

View
comments

Eve Branson, 91, pictured with her 65-year-old son Sir Richard in 2007

With her shock of white hair, a twinkle in her eye and a Bloody Mary in hand, she is one of the most entertaining women you’re likely to meet.

Despite her 91 years, the formidable Evette Huntley Branson says she still has male companions who are up to 40 years her junior, and she has no intention of slowing down in her twilight years.

After all, the remarkable nonagenarian has had to remain resilient to survive the rollercoaster ride of having billionaire businessman Sir Richard Branson for a son.

Over the years, Eve has viewed his astronomic rise to riches with a mixture of adoration and dread, recalling one particularly perilous challenge when she watched in horror as the famous adventurer plummeted into the sea from a hot-air balloon.

But those curious to know where Branson’s insatiable thirst for world – or indeed galactic – domination comes from, need look no further than this remarkable woman.

While her life may be slightly more down-to-earth than her son’s, Eve is still a force to be reckoned with and clearly has no plans to shuffle about or off any time soon.

When we meet at the Hurlingham Club in West London to discuss her forthcoming children’s book, her full-time job running a charitable foundation, not to mention her incredible energy, she is fresh from the croquet lawn, having just annihilated the competition.

She also plays tennis and golf, and tweets inspirational musings to her nearly 3,000 Twitter followers including: ‘As dung beetles have their fecal orbs, so too can we all find some purpose in life that is bigger than ourselves.’

She is sprightlier than some teenagers and just as sharp, especially when discussing her son ‘Ricky’, who, she says over a Bloody Mary, could just as easily have turned out to be a ‘moron’ but was never going to be ‘a nobody’.

So what are her tips for staying young at heart?

Lucky escape: Kate, Eve and Richard following the Necker Island blaze of 2011. Eve denies being 'saved' by the actress despite rumours to the contrary

‘Keep busy and have enough interests to keep you busy,’ she advises. That and ‘try to keep the lipstick going’. She credits the vodka cocktail and a nightly tot or two, ‘occasionally three’, of whisky, with helping her to maintain her youthful vigour.

And she also reveals coquettishly that she has time for a male dinner companion or two. In fact, she is due to meet one for croquet later that evening.

'He was either going a moron or successful': A young Richard Branson in 1968

‘I have friends, yes. My specials,’ she says, a twinkle in her eye. ‘It keeps you going, keeps you alive.’

After inquiring if these ‘friends’ are her age, I’m met with a withering look.

‘Oh no, darling! I don’t want a man without his own hair!’

Having just returned from a week on the unfortunately named Mosquito – Branson’s second Caribbean retreat near his famous Necker Island – it is clear Eve still spends a lot of time with her famous son.

Yet she can’t hide her frustration about the reports that Hollywood actress Kate Winslet ‘saved’ her from the raging inferno that broke out at Branson’s home on Necker in 2011.

‘Darling, the truth is that Kate was behind me,’ she says, sighing heavily. ‘We went down the steps together. She’s my dearest friend now. She lives next door to me in Sussex with Ned [Eve’s grandson, son of her youngest daughter, Lindy, who famously changed his surname to Rocknroll] and their one-year-old son, Bear.’

At the time, even Branson thanked Miss Winslet on his blog ‘for helping to carry my mum out of the main house to safety’.

‘Well, if he did he was very naughty because it wasn’t true,’ Eve says.

The blueprint of Branson’s rise from nothing to millions and then billions clearly started with Eve, whose extraordinary career has included stints as a glider pilot (she had to disguise herself as a boy to be accepted), a Wren during the war, an air hostess, a magistrate, and a property developer.

She recalls how, as a child, Richard was quick to pick up on her entrepreneurial spirit. A Christmas tree business never quite took off while his foray into breeding budgerigars literally did when his mother tired of them, opened their cages and let them fly free.

But while Richard, her eldest of three children and the only boy, was industrious, he was also a handful.

‘He was absolutely impossible,’ Eve says, correcting me.

The Eve Branson Foundation empowers Moroccan girls in the Atlas Mountains to earn their own money by making craft items to sell. The 91-year-old is pictured above with some of those who have benefited from the organisation's work

‘He had more energy than anybody else you can imagine; he was like quicksilver. I was exhausted by him! You know, thank God when he goes to bed.

‘At first he was desperately shy but we used to get so cross and say, “All you’re doing is thinking of yourself.” The children weren’t allowed to be shy.

‘Then when he was a teenager, he was very naughty. He had a mind of his own, like me. We two are very alike. We get on terribly well because of it.

‘He was very kind – he would bring us our tea in bed every morning.

Eve and Edward 'Ted' Branson married in 1949 (above)

‘He was kind to his sisters. He’d bully them like billy-o, mind you, but if anyone else did, boy, would they get it.

‘Ninety-nine times you thought he was absolutely impossible but then there was the one per cent where you thought, “There’s something there.”

‘He was either going to be a moron or successful. He was never going to be just a nobody in the middle. One adored him, but equally we hated him at times.’

After being desperate to leave Stowe school to get on with his magazine, Student, which later included interviews with rock star Mick Jagger, Branson managed just one A-level – in religious studies. His headmaster told him that he would either end up a millionaire or in prison.

‘We thought exactly the same thing,’ Eve laughs.

She did have to collect him from the clink in the very early days of Virgin Records after he was arrested for tax fraud – Richard was caught selling records that had been due for export.

‘It was the worst thing I had to do,’ she says. ‘I had to go to the prison where my little boy had been taken, shaking with fury and worry. I waited while he was brought up from his cell and he wouldn’t catch my eye. The judge said he would let him out on six months’ probation. He was so ashamed, but he learnt a lesson so it was really the best thing that could have happened.’

Eve and Branson’s father, Ted, were at least always privy to his next great wheeze and were often summoned to listen to his latest signing.

‘When he took on The Sex Pistols we were horrified,’ Eve says. ‘Don’t forget, darling, I was a JP and his father was a barrister. The idea of The Sex Pistols wasn’t quite on our wavelength.

‘He made us listen to Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. We thought it was ghastly, but it did very well so it just goes to show.

Branson, pictured above in 1971, had to be collected from the police station by his mother in his early days as an entrepreneur

‘We were a little bit distraught to think that our son was perhaps not going along in the normal way of life. But he’s knocked up a few pennies since then.’

Eve admits that watching Branson’s many record-breaking challenges has been ‘pretty nerve-racking’. The one that has clearly had the most effect on her is Branson’s successful 1987 Atlantic crossing with Per Lindstrand in a hot-air balloon.

The pair broke the record but then the balloon ditched into the sea off the Scottish coast and Branson was feared drowned. Eve, who had been circling in a helicopter above the balloon, could only watch helplessly as it plummeted and Branson jumped into the water.

‘Now he’s a grandad, I don’t think he’ll do anything too stupid. He loves his grandchildren too much'

‘It was a terrible moment,’ she says quietly, fingering the gold balloon charm on her necklace – a ‘precious’ gift from Branson to mark the incident.

‘We didn’t know if he was alive or dead. It was a bad moment, but you know, I had utter faith in him. It was in his nature. As a little boy he was always hurling himself into the river, bicycle and all. You couldn’t curb Richard.

‘Now he’s a grandad, I don’t think he’ll do anything too stupid. He loves his grandchildren too much.’

Eve remains tight-lipped about last year’s tragic Virgin Galactic accident, in which co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed during a test flight, but she is optimistic that she will be aboard VMS Eve, her namesake mothership, ‘to push the button’ when – or indeed if – the project finally gets off the ground.

Elsewhere, she is full of tips and advice, something to which her 11 grandchildren will no doubt attest.

She reveals she has advised them all, but only when they’ve come to her. One pearl of wisdom has been to try to persuade them to have children while they are still young – an iffy subject she even tries on me after suggesting that I’m ‘getting on a bit’ and should ‘just get on with it’.

‘Women put their careers first but to me it’s a pity.’

Branson’s daughter Holly has seven-month-old twins, Etta and Artie, with husband Freddie Andrews, while his son Sam has Eva-Deia, aged six months, with wife Isabella Calthorpe.

Their upbringing will be a world away from that experienced by Eve, who was born in 1924.

After marrying the ‘dishy’ cavalry officer turned trainee barrister, Edward ‘Ted’ Branson, in 1949, Richard was a ‘mistake’ on their honeymoon.

When Ted failed his Bar finals, it was down to Eve to make money. She started a cottage industry in the garden shed, making cushions and wooden tissue boxes that she sold in Harrods.

‘They were that awful phrase, “fancy goods”, but I had to keep the family going.’

Nowadays, her time is taken up with fundraising for and running the Eve Branson Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation now in its 17th year. It empowers Moroccan girls in the Atlas Mountains to earn their own money by making craft items to sell.

‘He’s always there and it’s wonderful to have him,' the great-grandmother says of her businessman son

Richard Branson throws first pitch at Detroit baseball game

She is also an author – the second of her children’s books Sarky Goes To Hospital is due out in December.

She is certainly busy enough to warrant having two assistants, both called Amy. One helps her in London, while the other assists her at her five-bedroom Sussex residence, Cakeham Manor.

She reveals that Branson, who turned 65 in July, is passing a lot of the Virgin company over to Holly and Sam.

‘I don’t think he’ll ever retire though,’ Eve adds.

It’s clear they get on well and that, despite her hilarious remarks about his character, she adores him.

She has just returned from a Branson family holiday in Mosquito, which she says now acts as the family’s private getaway island.

‘When I arrived, Richard was in the pool with one of his twin grandchildren.

‘He was bouncing him up and down and loving it. He’s a wonderful grandfather,’ she says.

‘Yes, he was a challenge – and has always been a challenge – but now he’s my pivot, something that’s always stable.

‘He’s always there and it’s wonderful to have him.’