GALLERY: Fife Show brings Farming and family fun
Hundreds of visitors turned out for this year's Fife Show which took place at Kinloss House on Saturday.
The Fife Show welcomed farmers, young farmers, families, and furry friends from all over Fife and further afield.
The jam-packed event showcased sheep, horses, cattle, poultry, and pets. There were also classes for young handlers, home produce classes, a craft tent, a kids countryside tent, and an outdoor trade stand area.
Entertainment for visitors of all ages included angling, falconry, ferret racing, Cupar Bowmen Archery, and a dog show.
The event had plenty of food vendors to enjoy, including local and further afield. The show worked closely with Food from Fife, sponsored by Branson, and Kettle Produce which sponsored The Food & Drink Marquee.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Courier
26-05-2025
- The Courier
GALLERY: Fife Show brings Farming and family fun
Hundreds of visitors turned out for this year's Fife Show which took place at Kinloss House on Saturday. The Fife Show welcomed farmers, young farmers, families, and furry friends from all over Fife and further afield. The jam-packed event showcased sheep, horses, cattle, poultry, and pets. There were also classes for young handlers, home produce classes, a craft tent, a kids countryside tent, and an outdoor trade stand area. Entertainment for visitors of all ages included angling, falconry, ferret racing, Cupar Bowmen Archery, and a dog show. The event had plenty of food vendors to enjoy, including local and further afield. The show worked closely with Food from Fife, sponsored by Branson, and Kettle Produce which sponsored The Food & Drink Marquee.
Telegraph
24-02-2025
- Telegraph
When The Telegraph met Richard Branson – the cosmic capitalist who can't say no
This article is published as part of The Telegraph's Greatest Interviews series, which revisits the most significant, informative and entertaining conversations with notable figures over our 170 year history. The below interview is introduced by Paul Kendall. It appears as it was originally published. The late Megan Tresidder, a Sunday Telegraph writer with great perspicacity, humour and intelligence, was the ideal interviewer to interrogate Virgin's founder. In the midst of planning a new train company and launching Virgin Radio, Branson was also busy setting up a second airline and opening his first megastore in America, as well as pursuing multiple legal cases against British Airways, when Tresidder sat down with him at his west London home. Her acute observations shed a fascinating light on the restless drive behind Branson's incessant empire-building. – Paul Kendall Richard Branson bounds into the living-room of his house as if he has bungee-jumped from his office across the hall. 'Hi]' he says, flashing the famous teeth. 'Five minutes]' he adds, and bounds out again. He lives in an enormous house in Holland Park, west London, with his wife, Joan, and two children. They go to their country house in Oxfordshire at weekends. The ground floor of the London house serves as Branson's office, from where he runs Virgin, whose headquarters are in nearby Notting Hill Gate. His living-room is sumptuously furnished in apricots and pale blues, but it looks as if a small boy stole in after the decorators left and set out his favourite toys. There are planes and bits of planes everywhere you look: a plane-shaped lamp, cockpit dials, models of planes, miniature planes festooning the various travel industry awards to Virgin which are displayed on one mantelpiece. Even the antiques – Art Nouveau bronzes of flowing ladies – seem to have been chosen for their aerodynamic lines. Branson reappears and settles on the sofa. Actually, he does not settle at all. He is nervous, apparently shy and is a surprisingly hesitant speaker, constantly apologising for rambling. He drinks four mugs of tea in one hour. He is restless, rearranging his limbs like a teenager in an ill-fitting suit (though he is, of course, wearing a jumper). He clasps his hands between his knees, or rocks back and forth, and at one point, stretches himself full-length on the sofa. He is 42 but he still writes on his hands. Today, the word scrawled in Biro on one hand is MacGregor – the Transport Minister. Branson is a beguiling man, quieter and more elusive than his public image suggests. He seems wholly without arrogance. He rarely talks about Virgin except as 'we'. In fact, he is almost painfully self-deprecating. At one point he asks me: 'Have you flown Virgin, by the way? And what did you think?' 'Great,' I tell him. 'Ah, thank you,' he says, giggling and flinging himself back on the sofa as if he has just been presented with a bouquet. His hesitant manner does not change, even when he takes an important phone call during our conversation, speaking in the same rambling, apologetic way. But how can this be? Everybody knows Branson is a consummate self-publicist, constantly pulling stunts, whether setting a powerboat record in Virgin Atlantic Challenger or dressing up as a Virgin stewardess. He always says he is only promoting Virgin but, whatever the motive, he is clearly a showman. He is also a notorious prankster. Branson's biographer, Mick Brown, reports that when a Virgin executive announced he was leaving his job, Branson responded by firing a water pistol at him. The executive stayed, but some are not so entranced with his high spirits. Ivana Trump was furious with Branson after he did his party trick and swept her into the air at a function last year. And financier Sir James Goldsmith was annoyed at being thrown into his own swimming pool by Branson. And yet, here on the sofa, Branson is shy and awkward. Perhaps it is not such a mystery. Unlike an interview, stunts and pranks require no introspection. All they demand of Branson is to agree to do them. 'I can't resist a challenge' The more he talks, the more this seems to be what drives him – an inability to say no that has become a creed. It takes him a while to admit it. He delivers a long speech on how he spotted the market for an airline, but when he finishes, I ask him, 'Didn't the idea simply tickle you?' 'Yes,' he says, 'I think that's true. 'I think it is important that it just tickles you: to do something because you enjoy doing it and bring the accountants in later on. I think it's likely to mean success in the long run.' But not always. He was tickled by the idea of starting a London listings magazine in 1981, when Time Out was off the streets. Event lasted four months. And he tried to launch a chain of Virgin pubs which did not work out. Why did he try? 'Basically, I met someone in a pub who wanted to run a pub and we thought we should go ahead and let it happen.' 'How far did you get?' 'Three pubs,' he says, looking abashed. He is famous for his adventures, and some of his exploits in boats and hot air balloons look like recklessness. But Branson says not. 'Foolish is not a word I would use. I don't actually like danger. It was the planning of them that I enjoyed.' He is undoubtedly good at backing up his grand concepts with careful planning. His airline has confounded the sceptics. But recently the financial press has suggested that Branson is spreading himself too thinly. His latest project is trains. He is planning a private, luxury service for businessmen, to run alongside British Rail when the industry is privatised in a year or so. On the day we met, Branson had been addressing the House of Commons Transport Committee on how the Government should tackle the privatisation. He urges caution. 'There was someone there this morning who wanted to take on the whole of Southern Region,' he says, shaking his head. But his own workload increases at a frantic pace. He sold the entire record-making arm of Virgin Music earlier this year to Thorn EMI, but other ventures have sprung up to take its place. This week, he launched a second airline, Vintage Airways, to ferry holidaymakers around Florida in old DC3s – the idea is to recreate the nostalgia of flying in the Forties. Branson was in Orlando to christen the service, two days after opening Virgin Retail's first American megastore in Los Angeles. He has just signed a deal with the Blockbuster home video chain to develop a series of hypermarkets in the States. In a few months he will launch Virgin Radio, a national rock station for Britain. Meanwhile, he is embroiled in legal actions. He is asking the European Commission to investigate the number of British Airways flight routes, having failed to persuade the British courts to look into it, and in a few weeks, he will also be involved in a libel case against the airline over its alleged dirty-tricks campaign to damage Virgin. And yet, he admits that the distractions of his battle with BA may have already damaged some of Virgin's other interests. Last year, it lost a bid for the Thames TV franchise. 'I think we could have done a good job there, but we failed the exam.' And, as he says, his Virgin Atlantic business requires total dedication 'because unless you immerse yourself in the airline business, you can't survive'. 'So why,' I ask . . . 'Am I going into trains?' Branson finishes. He launches into an explanation about the satisfaction of creating a service that all one's friends say is wonderful, enjoyable to travel on and will go out of their way to use, and of motivating the drivers who will feel it is enjoyable to work on. 'But I still haven't answered your question, have I?' he says, eventually. 'It's true, I can't resist a challenge. And yes, I am sure you are right – I would be better to concentrate on one thing and one thing only. I never have.' 'I couldn't bear to end up forgetting which company I own' His love of a challenge seems to have a lot to do with his childhood. His mother is an extrovert who began work as an actress but became an air stewardess after the war – a job that required nerve in those days. Richard, the eldest of her three children, was brought up to share her philosophy that life is about achievement. 'My mother and I have similar personalities,' he says. His father, he adds, is different. He wanted to be an archaeologist but gave in to family pressure to become a barrister, although he always regretted conforming. His regret influenced him when his son asked to be allowed to leave school at 17, with one A-level, and go into business. 'It helped,' says Branson. 'I was never very good at school, so it wasn't as if my parents had an academic on their hands. But yes, my father took the attitude that if I knew what I wanted to do at 16, that I should do it.' Branson left Stowe to publish his own magazine, Student, run on a shoestring from the rent-free crypt of a disused church. Eminent authors were charmed by Branson into contributing free. The printing costs were at first met through advertisements, and then from the profits of what was meant to be a sideline, selling records by mail order. The business was called Virgin, because Branson was only 19 and a novice. It was doing well until the postal strike in 1971 threatened to close it. Branson decided he had to sell the records in shops instead and opened his first Virgin store in Oxford Street. He then opened more to maintain the cash flow. By 1973, when he was a mere 23, he had 15 shops, as well as a recording studio, based in a manor house near Oxford, again run on borrowings. The loans were repaid with interest when one of Branson's first signings, Mike Oldfield, sold a million with his album, Tubular Bells. It made Branson a millionaire at 25. By 1984, thanks to his investment in stars like The Sex Pistols, Phil Collins and Boy George, he had become a multi-millionaire with 50 companies involved in nightclubs, making air-conditioning units, publishing, films, catering, videos, holiday resorts, and, of course, air travel. It was a laid-back empire, run from a houseboat in west London, but it was undeniably big. 'Are you an empire-builder?' 'Quite the reverse, actually. I don't like running big companies at all. I'm not someone who would be good at running an empire. I like starting companies. What I am good at is getting things going, learning about things I know nothing about.' A former employee once put it differently. Branson, he said, sees 'everything as a game. He regards life as a cosmic version of Monopoly.' 'Well,' says Branson, 'I'd like to think it is nothing like that. It's more down to earth. When you talk about it at an interview, it is easy to miss the fact that running a company is about talking to staff, trying to improve little details all the time. 'As a kid, I used to enjoy playing Monopoly and Risk, but the real world is different. I couldn't bear to end up forgetting which company I own. That's one reason why if the people who are running various Virgin businesses wanted management buyouts, I would encourage it.' It is an attractive paternalism, but you suspect that Branson also enjoys power. In his biography, there is a story about him negotiating with a pop group who asked for a Steinway on top of the contract fee. Branson suggested they toss for it. He won. 'But,' he said, 'you can have the piano anyway.' Perhaps he is simply addicted to gambling. Money does not seem to be a motive. Nor does empire-building: the Virgin-Thorn EMI deal, after all, removed in one go his largest power-base. Branson is an elusive man who defies analysis. But the impression that he cannot say no persists, despite protests that he proceeds by logic. 'We don't ever sit back,' he says, 'and think what businesses we should be getting into. It happens more naturally, when there is an obvious need.' He then contradicts himself. 'I don't know how this is going to sound. A friend once said to me: 'Would you buy The Independent?' I said I'd love to, but I didn't know Andreas Whittam Smith was thinking of selling.
The Guardian
07-12-2024
- The Guardian
In the frame: hotels, tattoos and family with Vanessa Branson
Vanessa Branson lives in a mews house set back from a cobbled street. At one end is an old synagogue, at the other a Greek Orthodox cathedral, and beyond the little courtyard is a home that, as soon as you enter, feels like the most comfortable art gallery in the world. For all its rickety glamour, this house is significantly smaller than Branson's previous home, a large townhouse in west London. 'I have four kids who were all living with me with their partners, and then I had a friend who moved in for a long weekend and stayed for 32 years – there were 10 of us in the house,' she says, merrily adding that selling it was the only way to get them all to leave. While her brother Richard was launching Virgin Records, in 1986 Branson opened a small contemporary art gallery in London's Portobello Road. She was 23, and it was a time, she says, when art meant 'sporting prints' for collectors' walls. 'It was quite a risky thing to do to buy something contemporary, but I realised that by buying a young artist's work you're encouraging them to push on. I didn't have much cash, but I started to buy works myself, and it's been a fabulous part of my life.' There are paintings, and sculptures, and more paintings that she uses as curtains, hanging by her desk. They're by a Glaswegian artist she once represented called Fred Pollock, and she's lugged them between every house she's lived in. 'He has an incredible sense of colour and he sort of set the palette of my life. Someone said to me years ago, when you're designing a house think of your favourite painting and just use that as a colour palette. Isn't it such an obvious thing to do? Matisse, Fred Pollock… artists are the greatest colourists – don't try to reinvent that yourself. It's a great way actually, of finding out what speaks to who you are.' The ground floor has the dimensions of a baby warehouse, with poured-concrete floors and exposed timber beams. It's a bit of a crush, she says, but at parties they've managed to seat 48 for dinner. At its centre is a vast, wooden kitchen island, and light streams through the glass doors on to a wall of African photographs. The house feels as if it gets smaller as you climb. On the top floor, Branson's white-panelled bedroom has views across the rooftops, and a window where her grandsons like to sit and watch the trains. On the ground floor, a huge Bridget Riley painting faces the kitchen ('You've just got to live with art and not worry about it – that was in the kids' playroom at one stage. And they're very robust paintings, actually,') and on the stairs there's work by Richard Billingham. Elsewhere, there are pieces by Sonia Boyce, William Kentridge and Tracey Emin, whose work she discovered in the 80s. In the living room upstairs, its walls red and a bruised purple, there is a dazzling glass fireplace by Danny Lane. Beside it is a little rat in a champagne glass, which was the first piece artist Polly Morgan sold, and on a butter-yellow cabinet sits an early Grayson Perry pot. 'I commissioned it from him after my husband left. It's a monument to the midlife crisis.' Perched on its lid is a gold masturbating ape. 'I'd seen someone had an urn for their ashes as a reminder of their mortality, and Grayson asked, 'What's going on in your life?' I told him and he said, 'Leave it to me.'' She grins. Walking through Branson's house is like being invited backstage at an exquisite museum after hours, where you stumble upon a series of Paula Regos before being offered something delicious to eat. She's never sold on the pieces she's bought. 'Oh, it just commodifies art more. And I think it's, well, not very cool.' Instead, when she realised she had too much art to hang on her walls, she simply built a hotel. In the late 90s, Richard Branson was attempting to fly a hot air balloon around the world, starting in Morocco. While waiting with him for the weather to change Vanessa walked through the city, a plan forming. In 2002, with business partner Howell James, she bought a riad on the edge of the medina and transformed it into a hotel, El Fenn. Despite the hotel's immense success (this was where Madonna threw her 60th birthday party), they still call themselves 'accidental hoteliers'. 'Because we've never worked out what the packs of butter should cost, and that sort of thing – we've just always wanted to make a hotel that we really love staying at ourselves. It ultimately worked, but it has taken 20 years to have some financial confidence.' After filling the hotel with art, both local and imported (often under her arm), in 2009 she founded the Marrakech Biennale. 'I started the biennale really as a response to George W Bush saying, 'You are either with us or with the terrorists.' I know the power of the arts in stimulating critical thinking and helping people have the language to discuss ideas.' She spends a lot of time in Morocco these days, but also on her farm in Sussex, and on Eilean Shona, a Scottish island she co-owns with former husband Robert Devereux, where they rent out cottages and host art and writing retreats. It's where JM Barrie wrote an early screenplay for a Peter Pan film and, with its wild woodland and perfect beach, is said to have inspired Neverland. 'It's more of a nature reserve than anything else, so it's complicated to keep the balance of nature right – you have to be quite proactive,' she says, of the work it takes, 'but I'm enjoying it.' At various desks in these different time zones, Branson wrote her memoir, One Hundred Summers – a love letter to her parents that explores the entrepreneurial streak running through her family – and, more recently, a novel that investigates the relationship between art and money. How does she balance her time? 'Not terribly well, actually!' All Branson's art has a story and all her stories lead back to her family. Every evening, as her father sat down for his first gin and tonic, he would proclaim, ''Isn't life wonderful!' It sort of became the family mantra. He'd gone through the war and seen a lot of friends die, and had a natural predisposition to gratitude after having had that experience. It's about taking pleasure in every little thing.' So, when she turned 60, Branson says, rolling up her sleeve, 'I decided to have that phrase tattooed on my arm, so I could carry that memory with me always.' She turns over her arm to show me the tattoo abstracted from another angle. 'Although, someone said to me the other day,' she hoots, after they saw it upside down, 'Why have you got a tattoo saying 'kill the children?'' She leans back in her chair, laughing, beneath a wall of photographs. 'This is something I've really only been able to put into words recently,' she says later. When you look at great art, 'and you open up your spirit to the artist's intention, you connect with their soul. It's an incredible feeling and it means you're living on a slightly different plane. That's why when you walk through the National Gallery you feel spiritually refreshed, almost, coming out the other side.' Leaving Branson's home I recognise the feeling instantly.
