It is always exhilarating to interview a flamboyant English tycoon, who owns over 360 companies under a solid brand name as Virgin.

What’s Up Jeddah: As a talented person, what do you do differently?

Sir Richard Branson: I am certainly not talented, therefor I surround myself with wonderful people, that’s why I end up getting all the credit.

What’s Up Jeddah: How do you spend your time and efforts, lets say in any given day?

Sir Richard Branson: I love everything I do. I usually spend 60% of my time on tackling social problems, the wealthier you get the more responsible you become to give back and help others. The rest of the time I spend creating new businesses and things we would be proud of. Such as the store we will open here in Saudi Arabia, being a flagship store for the rest of the Virgin brand.

What’s Up Jeddah: Are you planning on supporting new Saudi talents in getting published?

Sir Richard Branson: We are not planning to become a record company initially, maybe one day, we used to be a record company but we sold it. You never know, we might start that again.

What’s Up Jeddah: What are Virgin’s future plans in Saudi Arabia? Will we see Virgin airlines landing in Jeddah soon?

Sir Richard Branson: Well it is possible, I mean we normally fly more then 6 hours, many people would like to see Virgin Atlantic reaching this region, so we might go back and start considering that again.

What’s Up Jeddah: Okay Sir Richard, one more question, at what point have you became convinced that global warming is happening and decided to spread the awareness? What was the tipping point where you went “I think this is real”?

Sir Richard Branson: Al Gore talked to me about it and tried to persuade me to talk to other business people about it, I then met a lot of scientist as well who talked about it, I became seriously worried, but when I went to the Arctic, and saw the ice melting with my own eyes, it was clear to me that ten years from now all of the ice would have been melted, so now we are trying to bring this to the public and spread the awareness.