Joan Templeman: Philanthropist and quiet ‘boss’ behind Virgin throne
Sir Richard Branson’s wife Joan has died at 80, the woman who inspired a music compilation series and whose silence some saw as holding ‘sinister’ power over the Virgin empire.
Joan Branson stood in Marrakesh with her children, Holly, then 15, and Sam, 11, waving as her husband Richard rose above the city’s pink walls towards the Atlas Mountains in his Virgin Global Challenger hot air balloon.
It was January 1997 and all around them Berber dancers were banging drums and crashing cymbals while the muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer. “I am feeling very, very nervous,” Joan said, with some justification.
Within hours Branson and his engineer, Alex Ritchie, were forced to abandon their goal of flying non-stop around the world. Leaking helium, they hurtled towards the ground with Ritchie jettisoning food, water and equipment in an attempt to slow their fall before crash-landing close to a military base in Algeria.
“We are all numb. None of us know what to think,” was her reaction. If Joan wanted to end her husband’s risky adventures, she would be unsuccessful. Branson had previously broken the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing on water. He also had crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific by balloon.
In 1998 he made a record-breaking balloon flight from Morocco to Hawaii, but the following year was beaten to the round-the-world record by Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones in Breitling Orbiter 3.
An elusive figure, she never gave interviews and was rarely seen at events. To some she was the power behind the Virgin throne, keeping her husband focused on the task in hand.
Others saw a more sinister side to her silence. “To prevent any mishaps, the friendly woman who attracted genuine warmth was never allowed to speak on her own account,” Tom Bower wrote in his critical biography of the entrepreneur.
Joan was behind the small-change donation scheme introduced on Virgin Atlantic flights in 2003 and involved with Virgin Unite, the family’s philanthropic foundation. Branson himself described her as “a steady source of wisdom (who) has played no small part in some of my better life decisions”.
They met in 1976 when Joan accompanied her husband, Ronnie Leahy, the keyboard player with Stone the Crows, to a session at Branson’s recording studio, the Manor. At the time she was working at Dodo, an antiques shop in Notting Hill, west London.
Branson was infatuated. “I often make up my mind about someone within 30 seconds of meeting them, and I fell for Joan almost from the moment I saw her,” he wrote. “Joan was a down-to-earth Scottish lady and I quickly realised she wouldn’t be impressed by my usual antics.”
Branson began calling into Dodo, feigning interest in its wares. “Over the next few weeks, my visits to Joan amassed me an impressive collection of old hand-painted tin signs, which advertised anything from Hovis bread to Woodbine cigarettes,” he wrote.
One of them was a Danish Bacon poster with a pig licking its lips and looking at a chicken on a nest saying “Now That’s What I Call Music” that became the name of an album series.
Branson’ s persistence was rewarded with a weekend on the Isle of Wight and he later flew to chilly Manhattan and whisked her away to the sunny Virgin Islands, having heard that the 30ha Necker Island was for sale.
“I definitely did not have the cash to buy it, but try telling that to a fool in love,” he wrote.
Back in London they lived on Duende, Branson’s houseboat on Regent’s Canal. It had telephones and a photocopier but no washing machine and Joan had to drag his dirty underwear to a laundrette. A bout of pneumonia in 1984 persuaded him to move to dry land.
Branson was once asked to comment on a press story that Joan had only one thing to say about her husband: that his two biggest weaknesses were puddings and women.
He was relaxed about the former, admitting: “Rhubarb crumble is a particular favourite.”
As for women, she was no fool. “She knows you can’t chain your man up, you’ve got to let him go out, let him party to get it out of his system,” he once said, before rapidly backtracking: “I’m not talking literally, of course.”
Joan and Richard, who was knighted in 2000, had three children – Clare Sarah, who was born prematurely in 1979 and died at four days old; Holly, who works at Virgin; and Sam, a musician – before marrying on Necker in 1989.
She remained nervous about leaving terra firma. Her husband wrote in Losing My Virginity (1998), his first autobiography: “Joan still crushes my hand every time we fly anywhere together.”
Joan Templeman, Lady Branson. Philanthropist. Born Scotland, July 6, 1945; died November 24, aged 80.
The Times
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