Richard Branson took the seat next to mine on the airport bus. He explained his campaign to persuade the authorities to relax the rules on passenger transfer between airlines in cases of travel disruption, such as those experienced in the UK due to the recent snow.

On the plane, my school friend JP (now JC) and her husband GC only sat with me for a few minutes in economy before the British Airways hostess came over to confirm that there were two seats available for them in business class. Shocked at JP’s unguarded enthusiasm for the free Champagne and a prospect of decent leg-room in the cabin upstairs, I was disappointed that I would now be all by myself for the whole journey. I tried to cheer myself up. At least I now had two empty seats to the left of me across which I could stretch out later on. How much happier I was, however, to discover that the passenger to the right of me was Rod Stewart. Before take-off we chatted about portable recording technology, and Rod showed me a variety of solid silver state of the art music storage devices, all about the size of two inch memory sticks. Later on we played laser fight games. I couldn’t helping noticing that Rod’s skin was very smooth for a man in his sixties, but I resisted all temptation to ask him about plastic surgery.