Branson always puts up a fight, but his days as a railwayman are surely over

In my list of things to do before I die, going up in a hot-air balloon with Sir Richard Branson ranks pretty low. But still I admire his fighting spirit: he hates to lose, or to let his enemies and critics get the better of him. He saw off British Airways’ dirty tricks over the Atlantic 20 years ago. He successfully bid for the rump of Northern Rock despite long being sniffed at by the City as an unsuitable person to run a bank. Joint venture partners who have crossed swords with him over the years have found him as merciless as he is litigious. And he’s not going to step aside gracefully to allow First Group to take over Virgin Trains’ West Coast main line franchise.

But whatever arguments he musters against the transport minister’s decision, I have a feeling the bearded billionaire’s days as a part-time railwayman are nearly over. When he was running Cross Country and West Coast trains and bidding for the troubled East Coast route as well, Branson was a dominant figure in the disordered landscape of passenger rail. But station-platform stunts never suited his image the way photo-ops with leggy Virgin Atlantic stewardesses did, and his trains never lived up to the promise of his brand. They were no more stylish than anyone else’s, their full-price fares became scorchingly expensive, and their reliability was often poor: from 2002 to 2005, the two Virgin services together averaged only 70 per cent punctuality. Branson’s grinning persona so irritated passengers who just wanted to get from A to B on time without gimmicks that when he looked like winning the East Coast franchise against the popular incumbent GNER, the businessfolk of Leeds actually got up a petition against him.

As a regular traveller between Euston and Manchester, I have a special dislike of Virgin’s cramped Pendolino trains; their celebrated ‘tilting’ motion makes me feel sick whenever I try to work on my laptop.