MANY TIMES A VIRGIN

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Virgin's megastore expansion, on the other hand, reflects Branson's strength: an ability to take a consumer's experience to another level. The timing is terrible. Retail record sales in the U.S. slumped last year for the first time in a decade. Yet Duffell, the North American boss, says Virgin megastores are entertainment centers that will attract big audiences because they are so profoundly different. Certainly, calling Virgin a record store is understating the place drastically. The Times Square outlet boasts 250 listening posts and four Sony cinemas, inlaid-marble floors and an artist's replica of Michelangelo's Creation on the ceiling of the performance space in the classical section. In another testament to the company's shrewdness, Virgin paid a giveaway $18 per sq. ft. for the space that some 35 million people will walk by each year.

Branson's entrepreneurial flair blossomed early, at 17, when he started a magazine called Student and brashly talked the likes of John le Carre, James Baldwin and Vanessa Redgrave into contributing articles or being interviewed. Student was short lived, largely because the young proprietor spotted, in the number of ads for mail-order records, a demand among young British music lovers for cut-rate disks. Mail order led to the Virgin name (they were young and inexperienced) and a small store, which led to the Virgin record label, which led to more than 100 companies with 11,000 employees in 17 countries.

Branson grew up comfortably in a 16th century farmhouse in a Surrey village of Merchant-Ivory Englishness, son of a happy, well-connected family. His father Ted carries on the family tradition as a lawyer. His mother, a former dancer and airline stewardess, gets credit for bending the twig. "She wouldn't let us just watch television. She would say, 'Be a doer!'" With second wife Joan and their two children, Branson manages a vaguely normal life-style. The children are not sent away to school; Joan does the cooking; the obligatory nanny is her niece. Weekends are spent in the home of their heart in Oxfordshire, two conjoined cottages set on a river. Of course, there is that little private dreamworld, Necker Island in the Caribbean, rented out between family visits to the $13,000-a-week crowd, like Steven Spielberg and Robert De Niro. Princess Diana too at the usual royal rate, no doubt.

Branson's friends all insist that he is genuinely shy. Shy? A man who once made a speech dressed in a bunny suit? He admits he will do almost anything to advance his companies. It's an act that plays well, and compared with the standard model overstuffed British executive--well, the comparison just isn't fair. Sir David Frost, the transatlantic television personality and partner in Virgin Radio, says, "Richard has always presented himself as a rebel against the Establishment, although now he is an establishment of his own."

Is there no dark side to this fun-seeking tycoon? Just try competing against him. Within weeks, his new European airline--no-frills Virgin Express, owned with City Hotels--will shake up the high-altitude Continental-fare structure, cutting some prices as much as 50%. Says Branson: "We'll give the major airlines in Europe a proper run for their money."