Tom Bower’s first biography of Sir Richard Branson, in 2000, was memorable for its hilarious account of the Virgin tycoon’s accident-prone ballooning exploits — and for its trenchant thesis that he had ‘toppled from his perch onto a slippery, downward path’, both in business and personal reputation.

But what Bower depicted as ‘the beginning of the end’ for the bearded self-publicist turned out to be rather the opposite.