Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is a British business magnate, commercial astronaut and former convict. In the 1970s he co-founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.
Virgin Atlantic, a trading name of Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited and Virgin Atlantic International Limited, is a British airline with its head office in Crawley, West Sussex, England. The airline was established in 1984 as British Atlantic Airways, and was originally planned by its co-founders Randolph Fields and Alan Hellary to fly between London and the Falkland Islands. Soon after changing the name to Virgin Atlantic Airways, Fields sold his shares in the company after disagreements with Richard Branson over the management of the company. The maiden flight from London–Gatwick to Newark took place on 22 June 1984.
Christopher James Evans is an English television presenter, radio DJ and producer for radio and television. He started his broadcasting career working for Piccadilly Radio, Manchester, as a teenager, before moving to London as a presenter for the BBC's BBC Radio London and then Channel 4 television, where The Big Breakfast made him a star. Soon he was able to dictate highly favourable terms, allowing him to broadcast on competing radio and TV stations. Slots like Radio 1 Breakfast and TFI Friday provided a mix of celebrity interviews, music and comic games, delivered in an irreverent style that attracted high ratings, though often also generated significant numbers of complaints. By 2000 he was the UK's highest paid entertainer, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. In the tax year to April 2017, he was the BBC's highest-paid presenter, earning between £2.2m and £2.25m annually.
Virgin Megastores is an international entertainment retailing chain, founded in early 1976 by Richard Branson as a record shop on London's Oxford Street.
Absolute Radio is a British independent national radio station owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Absolute Radio Network. It broadcasts nationally across the UK via digital audio broadcasting and was on 1215 kHz MW until the closure of medium wave transmissions on 20 January 2023.
Pete Clifton is Editor-in-Chief at the Press Association (PA). Prior to the appointment he was Executive Producer for MSN in the UK and former Head of Editorial Development at BBC News.
Denis James Murray, OBE is a retired Northern Irish television journalist.
William George Thompson is an English technology writer, best known for his weekly column in the Technology section of BBC News Online and his appearances on Digital Planet, a radio show on the BBC World Service. He is also an honorary senior visiting fellow at City University London's Journalism Department and writes for BBC WebWise.
This is a list of Richard Branson's business ventures from the 1960s to today.
Virgin Money is a banking and financial services brand operating in the United Kingdom.
Virgin Mobile Telecoms was a mobile phone service provider operated in the United Kingdom. It was owned by Virgin Media which is part of Virgin Media O2. The company was launched by Virgin Group in 1999 as the world's first mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). As a virtual operator, Virgin Mobile does not maintain its own network but connects customers through the O2 network. Virgin Mobile offers contract mobile packages, as well as mobile broadband services. It sells its services directly, as well as through price comparison sites.
Ron Sandler CBE is a British businessman best known for his contribution in the rescue of Lloyd's of London, where he was CEO from 1995 to 1999. He was also the government-appointed executive chairman of Northern Rock during its three-year nationalization.
Daniel Nicholas Quine is a computer scientist, currently VP Engineering at AltSchool.
Michael Acton Smith OBE is the co-CEO and co-founder of Calm, a meditation space company. He is also the founder of Firebox.com, and founder and chairman of children's entertainment company Mind Candy which the created the video game Moshi Monsters. He has been described by The Daily Telegraph as "a rock star version of Willy Wonka" and by The Independent as "a polite version of Bob Geldof."
Paul Cheesbrough is a British Media Executive and is Chief Technology Officer of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corporation. He has responsibility for all the Technology in the company and also focussed on the separation of News Corporation into two separate businesses in 2013 and works for Robert Thomson after initially working directly for Murdoch.
BBC Design & Engineering was an operational business division of the BBC, which combined the BBC Digital, BBC Engineering and BBC Worldwide Technology divisions. It is responsible for all of the BBC's digital media services including BBC Online, BBC Red Button and BBC iPlayer, BBC mobile apps, internal technology services, technology procurement and BBC Research & Development. It was headed by the Chief Technology and Product Officer; Matthew Postgate.
Virgin Megastores was a retail chain that operated in the United Kingdom from 1971 to 2007. The company was established by Richard Branson, originally as a small record shop, and became a national chain. In 2007, the company was sold to management, and was rebranded as Zavvi. Zavvi entered administration in 2008 and subsequently closed.
Traingate is the popular name given to a 2016 disputed incident between Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party, and the train operating company Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC) and its minority shareholder Richard Branson.
The "Dirty Tricks" scandal was a series of concerted campaigns by British Airways (BA) in the 1990s seeking to undermine their rival, Virgin Atlantic. Concerned by the prospect of an upcoming challenger, Lord King, Chairman of British Airways, told his chief executive "do something about Branson". The ensuing campaign involved BA representatives impersonating Virgin employees and calling up Virgin customers to try to get them to switch their flights to BA as well as hacking computers to gain access to insider information on Virgin's flights.
The 2022 British Academy Television Awards were held on 8 May 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall in London, to recognise the excellence in British television of 2021. The nominations were announced on 30 March 2022 alongside the nominations for the 2022 British Academy Television Craft Awards. The nominees for Must-See Moment, voted on by the public, were announced on 23 March 2022.
