As Eve Branson turns 90, Emily Horton discovers that Richard Branson’s mum is just as entrepreneurial as her famous son
Richard and Eve Branson
How many grannies do you know who celebrate their 90th birthday in a boob tube dress, boogying around a pole on the dance floor into the early hours? Not many, I bet.
But Eve Branson is not your average nonagenarian. She makes you think twice about life and whether you are making the most of it, because, by heck, she is.
She may be mum to one of the world's most successful businessmen, Sir Richard Branson founder and boss of the Virgin empire, but Mrs Branson Senior is a tour de force in her own right.
I phone Eve at her home in Fulham, West London and ask about her recent landmark birthday.
“We had the most fantastic party on Necker Island,” she tells me enthusiastically of the week-long celebration at Richard's Caribbean island.
“I was with my three children, 11 grandchildren and lots of close friends.
Having seen the photograph that Richard posted on Twitter of his mum dancing away in a dress that belied her age, the birthday bash looked as far removed as it could be from the sedate afternoon tea favoured by most in their nineties.
So, how does she do it?
“I keep busy,” she says simply.
Eve has so many projects on the go, that it has taken weeks to get interview time with her. She tells me that she is just back from France, where she has a home in the village of Aigues-Mortes near Montpellier.
“I created a house around a canal which I rent out every summer. I open it up and close it down at the end of each season,” she tells me, her business cap firmly on.
Building a new property is not a project typically associated with someone of advanced years but, as I learn from Eve’s autobiography, Mum’s the Word, renting out holiday homes is something she has been doing for years and was one of her original entrepreneurial endeavours.
Following our interview, Eve has a meeting to organise a polo match in Morocco next April. The event will raise funds for her charity, The Eve Branson Foundation, which improves the lives of women in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco through access to business, education and health care.
The idea for the Foundation started in the late nineties, when she persuaded Richard to buy a place in the isolated region of Kasbah (now known as the Kasbah Tamadot hotel – part of Richard’s portfolio of resorts). He agreed on condition that Eve did something for the local community.
“He told me that he would buy it if I looked after all the girls in the surrounding villages. I kept my word and have been doing it ever since. But of course, I have had to make money to do that.”
Eve chose to fundraise with an annual polo match.
“Well, I find the men so attractive – they have to be young, virile and strong!” she exclaims, adding, “To Richard’s amazement, we managed to make quite a bit of money last year to help keep us going and we shall be doing it again this year. They had never had a polo match in Morocco before – I like to do things for the first time.”
Although life seems easy for the Bransons, the last few years have, by Eve’s own admission, been a challenge. Her husband, Ted, died in March 2011 at the age of 93, and Eve has had some health issues.
“It has been a bit of a struggle,” she says. ”Falling downstairs in the middle of the night; having the wrong hip put in and then it having to be taken out again. All that set me back a bit, but you just have to get on with it.”
There was also the fire on Necker Island in August 2011 when Eve was famously rescued by Kate Winslet, who is married to her grandson, the improbably named Ned RocknRoll.
“It was nothing. The fire was awful, but we all got out,” she says, brushing the incident aside.
Eve was born in Devon and photos of her in younger days show a beautiful woman. She went to ballet school and became a performer in the West End. Then, during the Second World War she joined the Wrens. Later, she disguised herself as a boy to learn to fly gliders. Being the matriarch of the Branson clan, we wouldn't expect anything less.
After the war, she became an air hostess and met Ted at a party. They married in 1949 and Richard was born in 1950; his sisters, Lindy and Vanessa, arriving in 1953 and 1959. The family settled in Shamley Green near Guildford and it was there that Eve challenged a six year old Richard to make his own way home one afternoon.
“Richard was throwing himself about the car with his usual energy. I stopped the car a mile from the house and told Richard he should find his own way back home,” she writes in her autobiography.
Two hours later, he hadn’t returned and Eve was beside herself. An hour later, she had a call from the nearby farm, saying they had Richard.
Eve says, “I was keen that my children should be full of initiative, enterprise and self-reliance from an early age.”
She certainly succeeded with her son, who is now planning to send us all into space in a ship that he has naturally called after his formidable mother. It is unsurprising to hear that Eve wants to be the first granny in space.
“Well,” she says, “I am going to take the astronauts up there in the Eve mothership.”
And, do you know what, I bet she does.
This interview was conducted before the tragic crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. We contacted Eve Branson, but she declined to comment.