Jenna Jameson

By the age of four, Jenna Jameson had already decided to become famous, and she knew how she wanted to do it. For a little girl growing up in Nevada in the 1970s, a world short on role models for women, it wasn't unrealistic, and she seemed to have a head start: she was going to be a television newsreader.
At the time her father was a producer at a Las Vegas television station. Every now and again he would let her come with him to the studio and practise reading out words from the day's news as they reeled out on the teleprompter. For eight years she was passionate about the idea. "I was really into it," she says. "And really good at it."
Then, at 12, Jameson changed her mind. What she did instead would turn her into the most successful porn star the world has ever seen, and a millionaire several times over.
Mindful of the terrible events that accompanied her start in pornography - the violence, the desertions and the drug addiction that nearly killed her - I suggest that, perhaps, being a newsreader might have been easier. "Oh, I don't know," she says. "Certainly, I have gone through my ups and downs. But there's nothing I regret. I mean, I really love the choices that I've made. That's for sure."

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Having sex for a living has made Jameson very, very famous. For more than 10 years she's been a recognisable face in a field in which enduring fame is rare; for the past five she's been better known than any of her contemporaries. And now, with the publication of her autobiography, How To Make Love Like a Porn Star, she's achieved something even more remarkable - mainstream fame.
The book - subtitled A Cautionary Tale - entered The New York Times bestseller list at number nine (and has remained there for months).
I meet Jameson in her Midtown Manhattan hotel suite. The natural beauty she's renowned for has been almost concealed beneath the generic Hollywood animated-sex-doll look: all silicone and pancake, accessorised with lip-liner and hot-pink Perspex platform heels.
Jameson's success is the result of a kind of brand recognition unprecedented in the world of "adult entertainment". In the past, porn actresses such as Linda Lovelace and Traci Lords became famous, in part, by explaining how they were coerced into a world from which they were lucky to escape.
But Jameson never wanted to trade her porn fame for anything else; she not only continues to appear in hardcore pornography, but embraces and celebrates it.
In 1995, at 21, Jameson marched into the Los Angeles offices of the then-fledgling porn video company, Wicked Pictures, and announced to the owner, "The most important thing to me right now is to become the biggest star the industry has ever seen."
In 2000, Jameson founded her own company, ClubJenna, and agreed a deal with the porn monolith Vivid to distribute her films. To date she's completed more than 80 films which exploit her aggressive bisexuality; last year's Briana Loves Jenna was the top-grossing adult film of 2003; this year the follow-up, Bella Loves Jenna, is already the biggest-selling adult video of all time.
Jameson's face - and body - have become synonymous with the image of the contemporary porn star. But for all her pride in her achievements in the industry, when I ask Jameson if anyone has ever seemed ashamed to admit they recognise her, she seems offended.
"Why?" she retorts. "How rude! I've done a lot of things [apart from] porn." But presumably there was a point when that wasn't true?
"Not really. I mean, I don't remember anybody ever going, 'Oh, I'm embarrassed to have met you.' " Jameson is not Jenna's real name - she picked it because it reminded her of a brand of Irish whiskey. She was actually born Jenna Massoli in Las Vegas in 1974. Her parents met in the early 1960s in Reno, where her mother, Judy, was a showgirl; her father, Larry, worked in a grocery store, but had served in Vietnam and ran with a crowd that included Frank Sinatra jnr and small-time gangsters.
The couple moved to Las Vegas, Larry got a job in television, and they started a family; with her elder brother, Tony, Jenna had the beginnings of a happy childhood with two devoted parents. But when she was three the family was shattered by her mother's death from melanoma. The cost of the cancer treatment bankrupted Larry and he moved into a trailer with the children. Shortly after he gave up his job in television, joined the Las Vegas Sheriff's Department and embarked on a one-man anti-corruption crusade.
The mob tried to dissuade him by attempting to kidnap his children. Jenna and Tony were put under police protection. In the end, the family left town and embarked on a series of moves.
When Larry ran out of money, they returned to Las Vegas and moved in with his mother. Emotionally incapable of family life, Larry spent all of his time at work, and Tony and Jenna were left to fend for themselves.
Shortly after beginning high school, Jenna began taking acid and cocaine with her brother; by the time she was 17, their father was taking it with them.
Did you think at the time that maybe it would have been better if your dad didn't take acid and cocaine with you and your brother?
"Ha ha ha! I still think that would've been a good thing. I had withdrawn so much that it didn't really even register. I just moved on. But I did that with a lot of things in my life. There were a lot of things that happened that would have broken anybody else. I was able to survive. That's all that really matters."
Jameson says she was a weird-looking child with an out-of-proportion body. "I was short, but with these long legs."
But by the time she was 16 - when Larry moved the family to a cattle ranch in Fromberg, Montana - she had filled out in a way that attracted attention. She had also begun dressing to make the most of her new body, in the briefest, tightest clothes she could find.
And while that was fine in Las Vegas, the other girls in the tiny Midwestern town didn't like the way their boyfriends looked at the new arrival. The beatings she sustained at their hands persuaded her to make friends elsewhere. Which is why, after a football game one day at the beginning of October 1990, she found herself hitching a ride home in a pick-up truck with four boys from a neighbouring school's team. It was a mistake: they took the truck down a dirt road and gang-raped her.
In her book she describes the events in harrowing detail: how they repeatedly knocked her unconscious and when she came to hours later - covered in insect bites, her clothes in tatters, her head resting in a puddle of her own blood - she realised that they had left her for dead.
Has she ever been tempted to have the boys tracked down?
"No. No - I wouldn't want to have to go through any kind of details about that. Writing the book was enough for me - I had closed off that part of my life. And I certainly don't ever want to go back there. The only reason I did it for the book was because I thought it was important for people to know the real me. So I don't think that I would ever try to prosecute them.
"And to tell you the truth I wouldn't even know who they were. I mean, I was so messed up by them I have no idea what they looked like. I can't remember."
Jameson is determined not to be perceived as a victim - or, more importantly, as a woman who became a porn star because of the terrible things that have happened to her.
"Was I in this business because I was victimised or because I wanted to succeed at something?" she writes of the gang-rape in the book. "I examined it from every angle I could, and every time came to the same conclusion: that it didn't make a shred of difference. It occurred too late in my development to be formative. Whether it had happened or not, I still would have become a porn star. I've been to enough therapists to know that."
But Jameson was raped a second time, when she was still only 16 - this time by the biker uncle of her first long-term boyfriend, a Vegas tattooist named Jack. She left home immediately afterwards, moved in with Jack and, after a brief stint as a showgirl, successfully auditioned to become a stripper at the Crazy Horse Too, where she made thousands of dollars a night.
She was attending high school at the time. It was in the Crazy Horse that Jameson was spotted by a scout for pornographic photo shoots, which led to her having sex on film for the first time. She was 19 when Up and Cummers 11 was released, and she became an immediate sensation in the small world of the porn industry. She left the Crazy Horse and the following year bought implants to enhance her already-large breasts to the absurd size expected of porn stars.
But there was another problem: in the four years that she had lived with her drug-addicted boyfriend, Jameson had acquired a devastating crystal methamphetamine habit. It stopped her from working and, eventually, eating properly.
Jack left her and it was a friend who eventually rescued her, when she weighed less than 40 kilograms, sending her back to her father in a wheelchair to recuperate. After weeks, Jameson regained the strength to go back to work.
She left Las Vegas for Los Angeles and soon after signed the contract with Wicked Pictures. The prudent deal she cut there, and her control of the number of films she made and the sex acts she agreed to commit in front of the camera, would be the beginning of Jameson's branding.
By 1998 she had become the biggest porn star in the world; last year she married her second husband, Jay Grdina (her first was a porn director called Rod). Grdina is the only man with whom she now has sex on film, and they live together in a big house in cosily conservative Scottsdale, Arizona.
Having sex for a living has made Jameson very rich. ClubJenna Inc is privately owned, so its financial details are hard to come by. But the company's annual turnover - including its subscription-only website, video productions, merchandising and lines of sex toys - is estimated at between $US5 million ($6.45 million) and $US15 million. Lately, Jameson has been thinking about retirement. It isn't age, she says. More pressingly, she and Jay are trying to start a family - and as soon as she gets pregnant, she says, she'll stop making films. In preparation for this, Jameson and Grdina have shot a stockpile of sex scenes - enough to keep the brand going for years. And for dedicated fans, there are ClubJenna mugs, calendars, T-shirts; there are vibrators; and there is Jenna's Vagina and Ass, a life-size moulded replica.
Jameson made sure that both this and the life-size Jenna Jameson "love doll" are anatomically accurate: "They put plaster all over me. It was the most ridiculous thing you've seen in your life. They moulded my entire body." At this, Jameson pauses and places her hand on her forehead. "God!" she exclaims, and then, in the tone of the tortured artist: "The things I have to do for my craft!"

This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in London's Telegraph Magazine.
Copyright © 2013 : http://www.smh.com.au/news/Books/A-life-of-ups-and-downs/2004/12/03/1101923326974.html

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Russell Simmons

Russell Simmons heads an empire built by rap music. As cofounder of the pioneering record label Def Jam in the 1980s, he helped launch the careers of a number of important artists, such as Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys. His empire includes a clothing line and even an energy drink, but it is his social activism that has caused some to say he might one day make an ideal mayor of New York City. Simmons is often described as the man who made black urban culture a part of the mainstream, but Newsweek 's Johnnie L. Roberts noted that "in the view of many, he is now emerging as potentially the most credible and effective leader of the post-civilrights generation."

Neighborhood was on borderline of rough

Russell Simmons was born in 1957 in Jamaica, a part of Queens in outer New York City. He was the second of three sons in his family, and both his parents were graduates of Howard University in Washington, D.C. His father was a teacher who eventually became a professor of black history at Pace University, and his mother worked for the New York City Parks Department as a recreation director.
The Simmons family moved to the Hollis neighborhood of Queens when Simmons was eight years old. Their home was near a corner that was a known meeting place for drug users and their dealers. His older brother, Danny, was pulled in by the scene and became a heroin addict. Russell seemed headed down a similarly sad road. He began selling marijuana while still in middle school, and for a time was a member of a local gang called the Seven Immortals. When he was sixteen, he shot at someone who tried to rob him. He was arrested twice on other charges and received a term of probation. Danny, however, wound up serving a stint in jail for drug use.

"Black culture or urban culture is for all people who buy into it and not just for black people. Whether it's film or TV or records or advertising or clothing, I don't accept the box that they put me in."

In 1975, when he was eighteen, Simmons began taking classes at Manhattan City College. He found a job at an Orange Julius outlet in Greenwich Village, but at some point he also financed his club-going lifestyle by selling fake cocaine. If he was caught by the police, he reasoned, he was not doing anything illegal, but Simmons of course faced a bigger threat from angry customers. During these years he hung out at the dance clubs of New York's outer boroughs, where the music was predominantly disco. But then a new movement filtered in, one that had come out of the roughest Bronx and Harlem neighborhoods: performers sang their own rhymes over a classic track, such as "Flashlight" from George Clinton (1941–). Simmons was at one such club in 1977 when he saw how wild the crowd went over one song from an early rapper and DJ named Eddie Cheeba, and he decided that this was the sound of the future.
His future, in particular. Simmons quit the fake drug business, and eventually left City College just a few credits short of a degree in sociology. He began promoting concerts, and then formed his own management company for artists, which he called Rush Management, after his childhood nickname. Some of the first rap songs ever played on radio were from his acts, including "Christmas Rappin'" from Kurtis Blow (1959–). He also managed Whodini, but it was the group that his teenaged brother, Joey (1964–), joined back in Hollis that put Simmons and his company on the map.

Krush Groove

The 1985 film Krush Groove was loosely based on Russell Simmons's life up until that point. It featured an array of top music acts from the era, from Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys to LL Cool J and a young Bobby Brown when he was still a member of New Edition. It was directed by Michael Schultz (1938–), who made two earlier cinematic classics of African American urban life, Cooley High and Car Wash. Simmons was one of the film's producers.
Two decades after its release, Krush Groove has become a cult classic, a snapshot of the early days of rap music when cultural critics and record company executives predicted the style was simply a fad. A then-unknown actor named Blair Underwood (1964–) was cast in the role of New York City music promoter Russell Walker, owner of the label Krush Groove. One of his acts has a surefire hit, but Walker does not have the funds to press the records, and enters into a dangerous financial arrangement with local drug dealers and loan sharks. He also battles with one of his stars over another artist, Sheila E. (1957–), whom both want to date. The plot of the movie, however, was beside the point: Simmons wanted to showcase the array of young talent emerging from New York's black music scene, and depict its vibrancy, too.

Launched rap's first serious label

Joey was the "Run" in Run-D.M.C., which had a spare, hardcore style of rapping that was also full of clever humor and incisive social commentary. The group's first single, "It's Like That," was released in 1983 and set the tone for the rest of the decade. Simmons helped make his brother's group immensely successful, especially after he teamed with a white college student from Long Island, Rick Rubin (1963–), to launch Def Jam Records in 1985. With their first office located in Rubin's dormitory room at New York University, they emerged as the first big players on the rap music scene. The label's first single was from LL Cool J (1968–), "I Need A Beat," and helped bring Simmons and Rubin a distribution deal with CBS Records.
During the mid-1980s Simmons became known for his sharp ear and ability to predict the next big thing in music. He helped bring the Beastie Boys to a wider audience, and even revived the careers of the fading rock act Aerosmith, when Run-D.M.C. covered their 1975 hit "Walk This Way." The two groups even made a video together, which became a classic of MTV's first decade on the air. As Fast Company writer Jennifer Reingold explained, by 2003 "the marriage of hard rock and rap seems natural, two strands of the same teenage angst and anger. But in the mid-1980s, the idea that black street kids and white suburbanites could like the same music was shocking."
Simmons went on to shepherd such performers as Will Smith (1968–), when he was still the rapper known as "Fresh Prince," as well as Public Enemy, to mainstream success. When asked by model/writer Veronica Webb in an article in Interview whether he had "invented" the rap genre, he said no. "I didn't invent it," he explained, "but I was the first to believe that the artist was bigger than the song. Other labels believed that artists only live record to record. I didn't have that disco mentality that you threw the artists away after the song hit." He and Rubin dissolved their business partnership in the late 1980s, but Simmons moved on to conquer audiences elsewhere. He launched Def Comedy Jam, which introduced comedians like Martin Lawrence (1965–) and Bernie Mac (1958–) in the early 1990s, and it became one of the top-rated shows on HBO. In 1992 Simmons founded Phat Fashions, a clothing line, which began growing at a rate of about thirty percent annually over the next decade.

Expanded empire to serve community

Rush Communications became the umbrella group for all of Simmons's ventures. At one point early in the 2000s, these included an energy soda called DefCon3, a wireless phone he designed for Motorola that sold for $549, a joint venture with a top Manhattan advertising agency, a sneaker company with his brother, and the Rush Card, a prepaid Visa debit card aimed at the forty-five million Americans who do not have checking account or access to credit cards.

From left, rapper Eminem, Russell Simmons, Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and Dr. Benjamin Chavis, CEO of the Hip-Hop Summitt, backstage at the 2003 Detroit Hip-Hop Summitt.

AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.

Simmons said the idea for the debit card came after someone suggested the idea of a prepaid phone card. While the pitch he heard sounded profitable, it was also a rip-off for the users. "I will turn away a deal.... Because people have dollar signs in their eyes," he told Business Week Online writer David Liss. "Making money is a pedestrian activity. The challenge is in creating a product or service that the world really needs."
As committed as he is to building an empire that keeps him at the top of the lists of black-owned entertainment companies in America, Simmons is also interested in moving forward on several new fronts. He launched the Def Poetry Jam, which was also carried by HBO and even became a Tony-Award-winning Broadway show in 2003, and he serves as board chair of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network. The summits are held in various American cities, and mayors regularly appear along with special guests like Snoop Dogg (1972–). They aim to raise political awareness among young Americans, and also serve as a voter registration event. The political power that Simmons was suddenly holding brought all the major presidential hopefuls of the Democratic Party—from John Kerry (1943–) to Al Sharpton (1954–)—to his summit to discuss issues late in 2003.

Devotee of yoga and Deepak Chopra

Simmons sold his remaining stake in Def Jam in 1999 for $120 million. Four years later, his empire was estimated to be bringing in sales of $530 million annually. Much of that came from his clothing line, which he expanded with his wife, former model Kimora Lee Simmons (1975–), to include Baby Phat and Phat Farm Kids. They sold a stake in their company in early 2004 for $140 million, in an attempt to bring it into more department and specialty stores. "When I started," he told New York writer Vanessa Grigoriadis in 1998, "they wanted to put me in the ethnic part of the department store. But Phat Farm's best-selling item is a pink golf sweater—it's not a grass skirt or a dashiki." Since then, Simmons has made Phat Farm competitive with such clothing lines as Polo Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger.
In his 2002 autobiography, Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money and God, Simmons recounts his business successes and the personal philosophies that keep him grounded. A vegan, he practices yoga daily and makes all his employees read The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra (1946–) and then submit a report on the book. Some of his top executives began as interns at the company long ago. "I surround myself with people that share the same spirituality that I believe in," he told Liss. "People who are focused on living better and not just on being out for themselves. I want to be around people who aren't just money-oriented but are focused on how they can give back to the community."
Simmons enjoys a lifestyle that mirrors that of the most successful of his music legends, but it is also one that puts him in the same categories as corporate New York's biggest players. He has an office on the forty-third floor of a midtown Manhattan skyscraper, spends summer vacations in the Hamptons, and lives with his wife and two young daughters in a 35,000-square-foot mansion in Saddle River, New Jersey. He and his wife hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton (1947–) during her successful bid for a New York State Senate seat in 2002, and he has also worked to overturn the harsh New York State statutes known as the Rockefeller drug laws. These date back to 1973 and the term of Governor Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979), and force courts to give even first-time drug users long jail terms. Simmons has met with New York Governor George E. Pataki (1945–), and has traveled often to the state capital in Albany to convince legislators to replace these laws with more balanced sentencing guidelines.
Governor Pataki is just one of many high-profile New Yorkers who respect Simmons. According to Newsweek 's Roberts, fellow rap mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs (1971–) said that "Russell is raising the bar for us with our power to be responsible, not just for ourselves but for our people." Real estate mogul Donald Trump (1946–) told Reingold that "I consider him one of the great entrepreneurs out there today. He's a fabulous guy with a tremendous understanding of business."
Simmons is sometimes mentioned as a future New York mayoral candidate, but he claims to have no political ambitions—other than using his platform to raise awareness about timely issues. These range from the war in Iraq to the New York City school budget. "I'm not telling people anything that's a shock," he said in an Inc. interview with Rod Kurtz. "Maybe I'm telling them things they've already heard before. But maybe because of my luck and success, they believe me."

For More Information

Periodicals

Berfield, Susan. "The CEO of Hip Hop; Impresario Russell Simmons Has Brought Urban Style to Mainstream America—And Helped Other Big Marketers Do The Same. An Inside Look at His Growing Influence." Business Week (October 27, 2003): p. 90.
Espinoza, Galina. "Phat Cats: Russell and Kimora Simmons Are a Volatile Duo—But They're Coolly Confident about Phat Fashions, Their Hot Hip-Hop Clothing Empire." People (July 1, 2002): p. 97.
Greenberg, Julee. "Keeping It Real." WWD (April 10, 2003): p. 6.
Grigoriadis, Vanessa. "Russell Simmons: Hip-Hop Honcho." New York (April 6, 1998). This article can also be found online at http://www.newyorkmetro.com .
Kurtz, Rod. "Russell Simmons." Inc. (April 1, 2004).
Lewis, Miles Marshall. "Russell Simmons's Rap." Nation (January 13, 2003): p. 21.
Liss, David. "Tapping the Spirit of Success; Entrepreneur Russell Simmons Thanks Yoga's Philosophy for Giving Him the Principles to Operate His Ever-Growing Hip-Hop Empire." Business Week Online (January 13, 2004).
Reingold, Jennifer. "Rush Hour." Fast Company (November 2003): p. 76.
Reynolds, J. R. "Rapping with Russell: A Q&A with the CEO." Billboard (November 4, 1995): p. 32.
Roberts, Johnnie L. "Beyond Definition: Through His Def Jam Record Label, Russell Simmons Made Hip-Hop into an Unstoppable Cultural Force. Now He's Turning up the Volume in Politics and Business." Newsweek (July 28, 2003): p. 40.
Roberts, Johnnie L. "Mr. Rap Goes to Washington: Russell Simmons Helped Take Hip-Hop Mainstream. Can He Make Politics Cool?" Newsweek (September 4, 2000): p. 22.
Schlosser, Julie. "Russell Simmons Wants You—To Vote." Fortune (May 17, 2004): p. 41.
Webb, Veronica. "Happy Birthday to 'Huge Hefner.'" Interview (November 1995): p. 72.

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Mary Kay Ash

 If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right.  

Mary Kay Ash is the Founder of the extremely popular Mary Kay line of beauty stores around the world. After her retirement from a sales job, she started her first store with $5000 she had as her life savings. She then grew the company to reach over $1 billion in sales.

Mary Kay Ash is the founder of Mary Kay Inc which has been included in the list of “The 100 best companies to work for in America” by Fortune magazine. Her line of cosmetic products is extremely popular. Even when she had achieved so much success in business, she has always held to her principle and told people that she put God first, family second, and work third in her list of priorities. Mary kept this as her guiding principal in life and has encouraged other women to achieve personal and financial success in their lives as well.

Mary was born in 1918 and named Mary Kathlyn Wagner. She married Ben Rogers at the age of 17 and had three children soon. When Ben was away serving in World War II, Mary sold books door to door. She was able to sell an amazing $25,000 worth of books within a short span of just 6 months. She then worked for Stanley Home Products where she was repeatedly passed by for promotions and pay raises which were passed on to men, even though she was one of the top sales directors. In 1963, Mary retired after 25 years of service.

She used this negative experience to list down all the negative as well as the positive traits she found in her previous employers. Once she was through, she had a list of powerful points which she knew was the perfect blueprint for the success of any company. So she started Mary Kay Inc. 1963 with the $5000 she had as her life savings and a little help from her son. The store opened its gates in Dallas with 9 independent beauty consultants. Mary based her entire company philosophy on her Christian faith. She also encouraged her people also to put God first in their life and family next. She made them understand the work came only after these two important priorities in life.

One of the most effective strategies used by Mary in her business is encouraging the staff with incentives. Mary Kay Inc. has a turn over of more than $1 billion with 37 markets distributed in 19 different countries in the world.

Mary Kay Ash died on November 22, 2001, Thanksgiving Day. One of her most memorable and insightful quotes is: “Do you know that within your power lies every step you ever dreamed of stepping and within your power lies every joy you ever dreamed of seeing? Within yourself lies everything you ever dreamed of being. Become everything that God wants you to be. It is within your reach. Dare to grow into your dreams and claim this as your motto: Let it be me.”

 Copyright © 2013 : http://www.boompedia.com/success/3362/Mary_Kay_Ash/

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Liliane Bettencourt

"Not a week, not a month, not an evening has gone by recently without the radio, the television and the magazines talking about the billionaire and her gigolo," railed France's most celebrated lawyer, George Kiejman, over the extraordinary story that has France spellbound.
The billionaire in question is L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. The "gigolo" is celebrity photographer and society dandy François-Marie Banier, 63, on whom she has bestowed almost €1bn (£800m) in gifts, much to her only daughter's dismay.
Eighty-seven-year-old Bettencourt intended to pass the twilight years of her privileged life in peace, flitting between her luxury homes: a sumptuous mansion in the chic Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, an equally luxurious property built by her father in 1920 overlooking the Brittany coast, and an isolated Seychelles island.
She had arranged for her only child, Françoise, 57, to inherit most of her vast fortune – as French law dictates – and was ready to live out her dotage on the interest – an estimated €34m a month, roughly 25,350 times the French minimum wage.
But then her tranquil retirement was disturbed by the clatter of skeletons tumbling out of the closet.
Today, this discreet pillar of polite French society is at the centre of a national scandal, as investigators pursue claims that she made an illegal donation to Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 campaign for the presidency via employment minister Eric Woerth.
The very regal Bettencourt is appalled to find herself in the spotlight. For decades, France's wealthiest woman has followed our own Queen's golden rule: never explain, never complain.
Even when in 2004 Monica Waitzfelder accused L'Oréal of receiving stolen goods for having acquired her Jewish family's home after it was illegally seized during the war, Bettencourt's immaculately painted lips remained sealed.
Unimaginable wealth has allowed the Bettencourt family to gloss over the more suspect aspects of its history, including antisemitic tracts and Nazi sympathies, as efficiently as one of L'Oreal's cosmetic cover-up sticks. Money talks. But an estimated €20bn fortune buys silence.
The only child of L'Oréal founder Eugène Schueller, who built a beauty empire on a patented hair dye he called Aureale, developed in 1907, Bettencourt formed a close bond with her father after her mother died when she was five. She has admitted being jealous of women who "circled around" her father, perhaps explaining why he never remarried.
Schueller, a boulanger's son, was a brilliant science student and heading for a top college when his family's fortunes took a dive and he was forced out to work. By hawking and trading on his wits, he made enough money to complete his studies.
After university, he went to work for a barber looking for a chemist to help him develop products for his customers. The famous hair dye was created in the family kitchen and in 1909 he set up the forerunner of L'Oréal, the "French Society for Inoffensive Hair Colouring", run from a two-room Paris flat that served as an office, laboratory and showroom. By night Schueller mixed dyes, and by day he did the rounds of hairdressers.
The belle époque came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the first world war, in which Schueller distinguished himself, receiving five citations for bravery during the 10-month battle of Verdun in 1916.
After the war, Schueller began buying up beauty product companies, acquired a Rolls Royce and a chic Left Bank apartment and built his Britanny holiday home.
By the 1930s, however, he had stretched his investments way beyond hair lotions and lipsticks, putting money into a secret group called CSAR (Comité Secret d'Action Révolutionnaire – Secret Committee for Revolutionary Action), a fascist-leaning, anti-Communist organisation that Schueller allowed to meet at L'Oréal's Paris headquarters. Known as Cagoule (Hood), the group was considered anti-republican and quasi-terrorist by the French government.
During the Nazi occupation of France he founded the Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire, or MSR (Revolutionary Social Movement), set up with the approval of the Germans and opposed to capitalism, Bolshevism, Judaism and the Freemasons.
It was through these organisations that Schueller met André Bettencourt, the son of a bourgeois Catholic family from Normandy. Bettencourt wrote for the collaborationist and antisemitic revue La Terre Française (the French Land), an organ of German propaganda under the triple command of Joseph Goebbels, the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo.
"The Jews, the hypocritical Pharisees, have no more hope," he wrote in 1941. "For them the matter is finished … their race has been sullied for eternity by the blood of the righteous. They will be cursed." Later that same year he wrote: "Denunciation [of Jews], is it a duty? Yes, if it serves the collectivity."
Around 1944, the year of the Allied landings in Normandy, Bettencourt had a change of heart, joining the Resistance. He was later awarded a Croix de Guerre and given the Legion d'Honneur, though his role in the organisation is disputed.
After the war Schueller faced prosecution for collaboration. Bettencourt, who was to marry Liliane in 1950, got him off the hook on the grounds that he had also been in the Resistance and had allegedly saved the lives of Jews.
André Bettencourt, who became a minister under General Charles de Gaulle, later recanted his wartime antisemitism. "I was 20 years old in 1940: it was an error of youth. We thought the Marshal [Pétain] would lead us out of the mess … I always said I regretted what I wrote," he said.
Much later, when his only daughter, Françoise, married Jean-Pierre Meyers, the grandson of a rabbi killed in Auschwitz, André Bettencourt was also fond of telling people his daughter had "married an Israelite [sic] who likes us a lot".
The Bettencourts' luxury home became a centre for Paris's beau monde where politicians, financiers and artists mingled under the art deco chandeliers.
"She knew how to choose the right people," Jean-Françoise Dalle, son of the former head of L'Oreal, who stayed with the Bettencourt family for six years and witnessed their "wealthy but ordinary" life, told the Parisien newspaper.
He said the Bettencourts' daughter, Françoise, was "pampered and brought up by an English nanny". Françoise, described by her mother as "always a cold child", met Meyers in the chic Alpine ski resort of Mégève. Despite her strict Catholic upbringing, Françoise has adopted her husband's religion, raising her sons in the Jewish faith.
Today, when not pursuing her mother's "gigolo", Banier, through the courts for allegedly abusing Bettencourt's enfeebled state of mind to persuade her to part with almost €1bn in art masterpieces, cash and life insurance policies, Françoise, 57, writes books about the Bible and links between Judaism and Christianity.
In another of his acerbic courtroom observations, Kiejman, who is representing Bettencourt in the photographer's trial, has said he believes the case is less about money than it is about a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship.
"This is a family story; the daughter is trying to use this court to settle a psychological conflict with her mother. It's a 57-year-old little girl complaining 'my mummy doesn't love me. She loves him more than me'."
Kiejman added: "That Madame Bettencourt should have the misfortune of finding the brilliant Mr Banier more amusing that her own daughter – and between you and me that's no surprise – is not for this court to decide."
The Bettencourt saga, with its deeply personal and damaging political twists, is set to run and run.

Copyright © 2013 : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/09/liliane-bettencourt-profile

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Hugh Marston Hefner

Hugh Marston Hefner joined the army after graduating from high school and went on to study art at the Chicago Art Institute. He then worked for various magazines, including Esquire, but when the magazine moved its offices to New York, Hefner remained in Chicago to start his own magazine.

The first issue of Playboy magazine, featuring a now-famous photograph of Marilyn Monroe, was produced on a kitchen table in his apartment. Hitting newsstands in December 1953, it carried no cover date because Hefner was not sure when or if he would be able to produce another.
However, the first issue sold more than fifty thousand copies and thus began the impressive life of Hefner and his globally notorious magazine. Hefner has been married twice and has four children. His daughter Christie joined her father's editorial staff and now holds the title of chairman of Playboy.
Epitomising the lifestyle promoted by his magazine, Hefner has also had a long line of mistresses. His girlfriends have included several Playboy Playmates of the Year, such as Marilyn Cole, Lillian Muller and Patty MacGuire.
He announced his engagement to 24-year-old Playboy playmate Crystal Harris on Christmas Eve 2010 via his Twitter account. The 84-year-old posted an entry which read "when I gave Crystal the [engagement] ring, she burst into tears. This is the happiest Christmas weekend in memory".
The couple announced that their wedding would take place on 18 June 2011 and Hefner said that he intends for the ceremony to be an "intimate" affair with only "a close number of friends here at the mansion".
Hefner recently hit the headlines when he made the decision to make Playboy Enterprises private. The $207 million buyout of the company gave the octogenarian full control of the company, and it was announced that Hefner would remain as editor-in-chief, while Scott Flanders was said to be maintaining his position as CEO.
Commenting on the acquisition, Hefner said: "Today marks the beginning of an exciting era for this company and our iconic brand. I believe this new ownership structure will allow us to further capitalize on the unique and global appeal of the Playboy brand."
In 2010, Hefner donated $900,000 to a conservation group, Trust for Public Land, to prevent property developers building on a site next to the iconic Hollywood sign in the hills overlooking Los Angeles. Explaining his decision, Hefner said "the sign is Hollywood's Eiffel Tower and I am pleased to help preserve such an important cultural monument".
He also purchased the crypt in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California beside Marilyn Monroe, so as to be interred next to her.

Copyright © 2013 : http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/hugh-hefner.html

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Warren Buffett

 

Early life

Buffett was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of a stockbroker and Congressman, and has become probably the world’s most successful investor.
As a boy, irrespective of his family background, he delivered newspapers to make extra money and this probably sparked his interest in the media where he has made several successful investments including the Washington Post Company, a stock that has made him a lot of money and which he vows never to sell.
Imbued with a determination to make good and an entrepreneurial nature, Warren dabbled in several part time businesses but his destiny was chartered early in the piece when, after graduating from the University of Nebraska, he studied business at the Columbia Graduate Business School under the legendary Benjamin Graham.

Working with Benjamin Graham

He tried to get a position with Graham’s firm and was at first unsuccessful. He finally got the job and, as he generously acknowledges, learned a lot about stock investment from The Master.
Graham eventually retired and Buffett started a limited partnership in Omaha, using capital contributed by family and friends. The partnership was a great success and Buffett is said to have averaged an annual rate of return for the partnership in excess of 23 per cent, far in excess of the market.

Buying Berkshire Hathaway

Buffett, after several years, decided to wind up the partnership, returning the lucky investors their capital and their share of the profits, and bought an interest in Berkshire Hathaway, a textile company, giving his original investors the the chance to invest. The smart ones did so.
Buffett’s early days at Berkshire Hathaway were not great. The company was in an industry facing real challenges from exports and high manufacturing costs. Warren Buffett had not, however, forgotten what he had learned under Graham, and arranged for the company to buy out two Nebraska insurance companies.
This was the start of Buffett’s interest in insurance and the rise to financial fame of both himself and Berkshire Hathaway. The insurance game is a hard one but under Buffett, the company has become, not only a successful share investor, but a leading provider of insurance.

Buffett and Charlie Munger

Buffett struck up a friendship with Charles T Munger, a lawyer and investor and Charlie Munger eventually joined Warren at Berkshire Hathaway as his Vice-Chairman, alter ego, and friend. Warren Buffett is always the first to acknowledge the contribution that Charlie Munger has made to Berkshire Hathaway. (Listen to an interview with Charlie Munger, or read our biography.)
Under Buffett and Munger, Berkshire Hathaway has become an investment giant that wholly owns a number of successful companies that include:

• Geico Corporation
• Nebraska Furniture Mart
• See’s Candy Shops
• Lubrizol
• MidAmerican Energy
• Clayton Homes
• Shaw Carpets

Warren Buffett, the man

Warren Buffett, the man, is just as hard to define as Warren Buffett, the investor. He projects a homespun frugality but one suspects that he plays his personality as close to the chest as he does his investment secrets. He always claims that it is his partner, Charlie Munger, who keeps his feet planted firmly in the ground.
Warren Buffett has become a legend and is generally ranked, along with his mentor, Benjamin Graham, first in a stellar cast of investors that includes Peter Lynch, John Neff, and Philip Fisher.

Best Warren Buffett biography

The most detailed biography of Buffett is The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, written by Alice Schroeder, who was given considerable access by Warren. It contains many facts not previously known about his personal and business life and is a necessary read, despite its length and occasional tedium. We also highly rate Buffett, The Making of an American Capitalist, by Robert Lowenstein.

 Copyright © 2013 : http://www.buffettsecrets.com/warren-buffett-biography.htm

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Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson

Summary

"Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson" (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate, best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies. Branson's first successful business venture was at age 16, when he published a magazine called "Student". He then set up a record mail-order business in 1970. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores and rebranded as Zavvi in late 2007.
With his flamboyant and competitive style, Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s - as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label. Richard Branson is the 245th richest person according to Forbes' 2008 list of billionaires as he has an estimated net worth of approximately $2.8 billion USD.

Early life

Branson was born at Stonefield Nursing Home in Blackheath, South London, the son of Edward James Branson and Eve Branson (née Huntley Flindt). His grandfather, the Right Honourable Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson, was a Judge of the High Court of Justice and a Privy Councillor. Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School (now Bishopsgate School) until the age of thirteen. He then attended Stowe School until he was fifteen. Branson had poor academic performance as a student, yet by the age of fifteen he had started two ventures that eventually failed: one growing Christmas trees and another raising budgerigars .
At seventeen, Branson left school and moved to London, where he began his first successful business, "Student" magazine. When he was seventeen, he opened his first charity, the 'Student Advisory Centre.'

Record business

Branson started his first record business after he traveled across the English Channel and purchased crates of 'cut-out' records from a record discounter. He sold the records out of the boot of his car to retail outlets in London. He continued selling cut-outs through a record mail order business in 1970. Trading under the name 'Virgin' he sold records for considerably less than the so-called 'High Street' outlets, especially the chain W. H. Smith. The name 'Virgin' was a selling point because records were sold in a new condition (unlike in other shops where records were being handled when listened to in record booths). At the time many products were sold under restrictive marketing agreements which limited discounting, despite efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to limit so-called resale price maintenance. In effect Branson began the series of changes that led to large-scale discounting of recorded music. Branson and some colleagues were discussing a new name for his business when one suggested that it should be called 'Virgin' since they were all virgins to business .
Branson eventually started a record shop in Oxford Street in London and, shortly after, launched the record label Virgin Records with Nick Drake. Branson earned enough money from his record store to buy a country estate, in which he installed a recording studio. He leased out studio time to fledgling artists, including multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield.
In 1971, Branson was arrested and charged for selling records in Virgin stores that had been declared export stock. He settled out-of-court with UK Customs and Excise with an agreement to repay the unpaid tax and fines. Branson's mother Eve re-mortgaged the family home to help pay the settlement .
Virgin Records' first release was Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells", which was a best-seller and British LP chart topper. The company signed controversial bands such as the Sex Pistols, which other companies were reluctant to sign. It also won praise for exposing the public to obscure avant-garde music such as the krautrock bands Faust and Can. Virgin Records also introduced Culture Club to the music world. In the early 1980s, Virgin purchased the gay nightclub Heaven. In 1991 in a consortium with David Frost, Richard Branson had made the unsuccessful bid for three ITV franchisees under the CPV-TV name.
In 1992, to keep his airline company afloat, Branson sold the Virgin label to EMI, a more conservative company which previously had rescinded a contract with the Sex Pistols, for $1 billion . Branson is said to have wept when the sale was completed since the record business had been the genesis of the Virgin Empire. He later formed V2 Records to re-enter the music business.

Personal life

The eldest and only boy of three children, his sisters are Lindi and Vanessa. His father Ted followed in his father's footsteps, assuming the career of a barrister. Branson's mother, Eve, worked in the theatre, as a glider pilot instructor and as a flight attendant.
Branson had poor academic records, contrasted with excellent performance in sports.
Branson is married to his second wife, Joan Templeman, with whom he has two children: Holly, a doctor, and Sam Branson. The couple wed, at Holly's suggestion when she was eight years old, in 1989 at Necker Island, a 74 acre island in the British Virgin Islands that Branson owns. He also owns land on the Caribbean Island of Antigua and Barbuda.
In 1998 Branson released his autobiography entitled "Losing My Virginity", an international bestseller.
Branson was deeply saddened by the disappearance in September 2007 of fellow adventurer Steve Fossett and wrote an article for "Time" magazine in October 2007 entitled 'My Friend, Steve Fossett.'

Business ventures

Branson formed Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984, launched Virgin Mobile in 1999, Virgin Blue in Australia in 2000, and later failed in a 2000 bid to handle the National Lottery. Branson wrote in his autobiography of the decision to start an airline:
In 1997, Branson took what many saw as being one of his riskier business exploits by entering into the railway business. Virgin Trains won the franchises for the former Intercity West Coast and Cross-Country sectors of British Rail. Launched with the usual Branson fanfare with promises of new high-tech tilting trains and enhanced levels of service, Virgin Trains soon ran into problems with the rolling stock and infrastructure it had inherited from British Rail. The company's reputation was almost irreversibly damaged in the late 1990s as it struggled to make trains reliably run on time while it awaited the modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, and the arrival of new rolling stock.
Virgin acquired European short-haul airline Euro Belgian Airlines in 1996 and renamed it Virgin Express. In 2006 the airline was merged with SN Brussels Airlines forming Brussels Airlines. It also started a national airline based in Nigeria, called Virgin Nigeria. Another airline, Virgin America, began flying out of the San Francisco International Airport in August 2007. Branson has also developed a Virgin Cola brand and even a Virgin Vodka brand, which has not been a very successful enterprise. As a consequence of these lacklustre performers, the satirical British fortnightly magazine "Private Eye" has been critical of Branson and his companies (see "Private Eye" image caption).
After the so-called campaign of 'dirty tricks' (see expanded reference in Virgin Atlantic Airways), Branson sued rival airline British Airways for libel in 1992. John King, then-chairman of British Airways, counter-sued, and the case went to trial in 1993. British Airways, faced with likely defeat, settled the case, giving £500,000 to Branson and a further £110,000 to his airline and had to pay legal fees of up to £3 million. Branson divided his compensation (the so-called 'BA bonus') among his staff.
On 25 September 2004, Branson announced the signing of a deal under which a new space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, will license the technology behind Spaceship One-funded by Microsoft co-Founder Paul Allen and designed by legendary American aeronautical engineer and visionary Burt Rutan-to take paying passengers into suborbital space. Virgin Galactic (wholly owned by Virgin Group) plans to make flights available to the public by late 2009 with tickets priced at US$200,000 using Scaled Composites White Knight Two.
Branson's next venture with the Virgin group is Virgin Fuels, which is set to respond to global warming and exploit the recent spike in fuel costs by offering a revolutionary, cheaper fuel for automobiles and, in the near future, aircraft. Branson has stated that he was formerly a global warming skeptic and was influenced in his decision by a breakfast meeting with Al Gore.
Branson has been tagged as a 'transformational leader' in the management lexicon, with his maverick strategies and his stress on the Virgin Group as an organization driven on informality and information, one that is bottom-heavy rather than strangled by top-level management.
He was 9th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2006, worth just over £3 billion.
On 21 September 2006, Branson pledged to invest the profits of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains in research for environmentally friendly fuels. The investment is estimated to be worth $3 billion.
On 4 July 2006, Branson sold his Virgin Mobile company to UK cable TV, broadband, and telephone company NTL/NTL:Telewest for almost £1 billion.
As part of the sale, the company pays a minimum of £8.5 million per year to use the Virgin name and Branson became the company's largest shareholder. The new company was launched with much fanfare and publicity on 8 February 2007, under the name Virgin Media. The decision to merge his Virgin Media Company with NTL was in order to integrate both of the companies' compatible parts of commerce. Branson used to own three quarters of Virgin Mobile, whereas now he owns 15 percent of the new Virgin Media company.
In 2006, Branson formed Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation an entertainment company focussed on creating new stories and characters for a global audience. The Company was founded with author Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and entrepreneurs Sharad Devarajan and Gotham Chopra.
Branson also launched the Virgin Health Bank on 1 February 2007, offering parents-to-be the opportunity of storing their baby's umbilical cord blood stem cells in private and public stem cell banks after their baby's birth.
In June 2006, a tip-off from Virgin Atlantic led US and UK competition authorities to investigate price-fixing attempts between Virgin Atlantic and British Airways. In August 2007, British Airways was fined £271 million over the allegations. Virgin Atlantic was given immunity for tipping off the authorities and received no fine - a controversial decision the Office of Fair Trading defended as being in the public interest.
On 9 February 2007, Branson announced the setting up of a new Global science and technology prize-The Virgin Earth Challenge-in the belief that history has shown that prizes of this nature encourage technological advancements for the good of mankind. The Virgin Earth Challenge will award $25 million to the individual or group who are able to demonstrate a commercially viable design which will result in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least ten years without countervailing harmful effects. This removal must have long term effects and contribute materially to the stability of the Earth's climate.
Branson also announced that he would be joined in the adjudication of the Prize by a panel of five judges-all world authorities in their respective fields: Al Gore, Sir Crispin Tickell, Tim Flannery, Jim Hansen and James Lovelock. The panel of judges will be assisted in their deliberations by The Climate Group and Special Advisor to The Virgin Earth Prize Judges, Steve Howard.
Richard Branson got involved with football when he sponsored Nuneaton Borough A.F.C. for their January 2006 FA Cup 3rd round game against Middlesbrough F.C.. The game ended 1-1 and the Virgin brand was also on Nuneaton Borough's shirts for the replay which they eventually lost 2-5.
In August 2007, Branson announced that he bought a 20 percent stake in Malaysia's AirAsia X.
On October 13, 2007, Branson's Virgin Group sought to add Northern Rock to its empire after submitting an offer which would result in Branson personally owning 30% of the company, changing the company's name from Northern Rock to Virgin Money.
The Daily Mail ran a campaign against his bid and Vince Cable suggested in the House of Commons that Branson's criminal conviction for tax evasion might be felt by some as a good enough reason not to trust him with public money.
On January 10, 2008, Branson's Virgin Healthcare announced that it would open a chain of health care clinics that would offer conventional medical care alongside homeopathic and complementary therapies. The Financial Times reported that
Ben Bradshaw, UK's health minister, welcomed the launch. 'I am pleased that Virgin Healthcare is proposing to work with GPs to help develop more integrated services for patients.'

Humanitarian initiatives

In the late 1990s, Branson and musician and activist Peter Gabriel discussed with Nelson Mandela their idea of a small, dedicated group of leaders, working objectively and without any vested personal interest to solve difficult global conflicts .
On July 18, 2007, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nelson Mandela announced the formation of a new group, The Elders, in a speech he delivered on the occasion of his 89th birthday. The founding members of this group are Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson, and Muhammad Yunus.
The Elders will be independently funded by a group of 'Founders', including Branson and Gabriel.
Desmond Tutu serves as the chair of The Elders-who will use their collective skills to catalyze peaceful resolutions to long-standing conflicts, articulate new approaches to global issues that are causing or may cause immense human suffering, and share wisdom by helping to connect voices all over the world. They will work together over the next several months to carefully consider which specific issues they will approach.
In September 2007, Richard Branson chaired the jury of the first Picnic Green Challenge, a ?500.000 award for best new green initiative, set up by the Dutch Postcode Lottery and the (PICNIC Network) of creative professionals. The first Green Challenge was won by (Qurrent) with the Qbox.
In March 2008, Richard Branson hosted an environmental gathering at his private island, Necker Island, in the Caribbean with several prominent entrepreneurs, celebrities, and world leaders. They discussed global warming-related problems facing the world, hoping that this meeting will be a precursor to many more future discussions regarding similar problems. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Larry Page of Google were in attendance.

World record attempts

Richard Branson made several world record-breaking attempts after 1985, when in the spirit of the Blue Riband he attempted the fastest Atlantic Ocean crossing. His first attempt in the 'Virgin Atlantic Challenger' led to the boat capsizing in British waters and a rescue by RAF helicopter, which received wide media coverage. Some newspapers called for Branson to reimburse the government for the rescue cost. In 1986, in his 'Virgin Atlantic Challenger II', with sailing expert Daniel McCarthy, he beat the record by two hours. A year later his hot air balloon 'Virgin Atlantic Flyer' crossed the Atlantic. This was the largest balloon at 2.3 million cubic feet (65,000 m³), and the first hot-air balloon crossing the Atlantic. It reached 130 miles per hour (209 km/h).
In January 1991, Branson crossed the Pacific from Japan to Arctic Canada, , in a balloon of 2.6 million cubic feet (74,000 m³). This broke the record, with a speed of 245 miles per hour.
Between 1995 and 1998 Branson, Per Lindstrand and Steve Fossett made attempts to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. In late 1998 they made a record-breaking flight from Morocco to Hawaii but were unable to complete a global flight before Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones in "Breitling Orbiter", March 1999.
In March 2004, Branson set a record by travelling from Dover to Calais in a Gibbs Aquada, in 1 hour, 40 minutes, and 6 seconds, the fastest crossing of the English Channel in an amphibious vehicle. The previous record of six hours was set by two Frenchmen.
In September 2008 Branson and his children will attempt a Eastbound record crossing of the Atlantic ocean under sail in his 99m sloop "Virgin Money".

Television, film, and print

Branson has guest starred, usually playing himself, on several television shows, including "Friends", "Baywatch", "Birds of a Feather", "Only Fools and Horses", "The Day Today", a special episode of the comedy "Goodness Gracious Me" and Tripping Over. Branson made several appearances during the nineties on the BBC Saturday morning show "Live & Kicking", where he was referred to as 'the pickle man' by comedy act Trev and Simon (in reference to Branston Pickle). Branson also appears in a cameo early in XTC's 'Generals and Majors' video.
He was also the star of a reality television show on Fox called "The Rebel Billionaire" (2004), in which sixteen contestants were tested for their entrepreneurship and sense of adventure. It did not succeed as a rival show to Donald Trump's The Apprentice and only lasted one season.
His high public profile often leaves him open as a figure of satire-the 2000 AD series "Zenith" features a parody of Branson as a super villain, as the comic's publisher and favoured distributor and the Virgin group were in competition at the time. He is also caricatured in "The Simpsons" episode 'Monty Can't Buy Me Love' as the tycoon Arthur Fortune, and as the ballooning megalomaniac Richard Chutney (a pun on Branson, as in Branston Pickle) in "Believe Nothing". The character Grandson Richard 39 in Terry Pratchett's Wings is modeled on Branson.
He has a cameo appearance in several films: "Around the World in 80 Days (2004)", where he played a hot-air balloon operator; "Superman Returns", where he was credited as a 'Shuttle Engineer' and appeared alongside his son, Sam, with a Virgin Galactic-style commercial suborbital shuttle at the centre of his storyline. He also has a cameo in the James Bond film "Casino Royale". Here, he is seen as a passenger going through Miami Airport security check-in and being frisked - several Virgin Atlantic planes appear soon after.
He makes a number of brief and disjointed appearances in the cult classic documentary "Derek and Clive Get the Horn" which follows the exploits of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore recording their last comedy album. Branson and his mother were also featured in the documentary film, "Lemonade Stories." In early 2006 on "Rove Live", Rove McManus and Sir Richard pushed each other into a swimming pool fully clothed live on TV during a 'Live at your house' episode.
Branson is a "Star Trek" fan and named his new spaceship VSS "Enterprise" in honour of the famous "Star Trek" ships, and in 2006, offered actor William Shatner a free ride on the inaugural space launch of Virgin Galactic.
In August 2007, Branson announced on "The Colbert Report" that he had named a new aircraft Air Colbert. He later doused political satirist and talk show host Stephen Colbert with water from his mug. Branson subsequently took a retaliatory splash from Colbert. The interview quickly ended, with both laughing as shown on the episode aired on Comedy Central on August 22, 2007. The interview was promoted on "The Report" as the "Colbert-Branson Interview Trainwreck". Branson then made a cameo appearance on The Soup playing an intern working under Joel McHale who had been warned against getting into water fights with Stephen Colbert, and being subsequently fired.
In March 2008 he made a small appearance in a budget Bollywood action film alongside Neha Dhupia. Branson caused a stir in the Indian media as he turned Dhupia upside down on a stage.

Politics

Branson was knighted in 1999 for 'services to entrepreneurship' and presented as a millennium icon. In the 1980s, he was briefly given the post of 'litter tsar' by Margaret Thatcher-charged with 'keeping Britain tidy'. He was again seen as close to the government when the Labour Party came to power in 1997. In 2005 he declared that there were only negligible differences between the two main parties on economic matters. He has frequently been mentioned as a candidate for Mayor of London, and polls have suggested he would be a viable candidate, though he has yet to express interest.

Business practices

Branson's business empire is owned by a complicated series of offshore trusts and companies. "The Sunday Times" stated that his wealth is calculated at £3.065 billion; if he were to retire to his Caribbean island and liquidate all of this he would pay relatively little in tax.
When Virgin Mobile launched its service in Canada on 1 March, 2005, the use of 'naughty nurses' in its advertising triggered 'The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario' to demand an apology from Branson and an immediate stop to the campaign, and called on members to boycott Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile spokeswoman Paula Lash said the company never intended to offend anyone, but was not about to pull the advertising.
When Virgin Mobile included 'super hot holiday' wrapping paper with the December 2005 issue of youth magazine Vice, as part of the Hot Box promotion, the wrapping paper contained illustrated holiday angels, where the male angel is touching the female's breast, while the female angel has her hand on the male's genitals. Famous Players stopped its partnership deals with Virgin Mobile after a complaint.
In 1988, Branson wanted to buy Virgin Music back for the same amount of money, per share, that he had sold it for, valuing the company at £248m. The shareholders agreed, although they were unaware that Branson had already agreed to sell the same shares to Pony Canyon, a Japanese media company, for £377m. The incident was revealed in 2000 when Branson was on the verge of winning the franchise for the National Lottery from Camelot Group.

Honours

In 1993, Branson was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Technology from Loughborough University.
He was knighted in 1999 for his 'services to entrepreneurship'.
Branson is the patron of several charities, including the International Rescue Corps and Prisoners Abroad, a registered charity which supports Britons who are detained outside of the UK.
Sir Richard appears at No. 85 on the 2002 list of '100 Greatest Britons' (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public). Sir Richard also ranks No. 86 on Channel 4's 2003 list of '100 Worst Britons'. Sir Richard was also ranked in 2007's "Time Magazine" 'Top 100 Most Influential People in the World'.
On 7 December, 2007, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon presented Branson with the United Nations Correspondents Association Citizen of the World Award for his support for environmental and humanitarian causes.

Copyright © 2013 : http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/Richard-Branson/biography/ 

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