Gould sighed, and a look of intense sadness passed over his face. “I held that remark against my father for a long time,” he said. “Every once in a while, through the years, I’d remember it, and it would cut me to the quick. Then, years and years later, long after I had left home and long after my father had died, I was walking along the street one night here in New York and happened to think of it, and it must’ve been the first time I had ever thought of it objectively, for I suddenly burst out laughing.” - JOE GOULD’S SECRET—I, The New Yorker, September 19, 1964 issue.
2. SIX years ago, in a fit of pique, Sir Richard Branson tore up the fax announcing Camelot’s successful lottery bid. “I’ve lost the chance to do the most important thing in my life,” he declared.
For a man unaccustomed to rejection, it cut him to the quick. His image had taken a knock, a very public one. Sir Richard had seemed unassailable, the man-of-the-people entrepreneur with the Midas touch; the toothy, trustworthy, woolly-pully-clad businessman who just could not help but make money.
For all the melodrama of his response to the failure of his lottery bid, he was still, according to Forbes Magazine, a billionaire, the third richest in Britain and head of a labyrinthine network of some 200 companies. But it is a trait of this disarmingly charming but highly shrewd businessman to take on those he feels have done him down.
British Airways discovered that in the High Court as did GTech, the company providing Camelot with its hi-tech lottery system, when a libel jury decided Guy Snowden, its disgraced director, had indeed tried to bribe the Virgin boss. Sir Richard had been preparing Camelot’s downfall for some time.
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