There's little one can say about Richard Branson — that’s Sir Richard Branson — that hasn’t been said (or written, or shouted through a megaphone) before. Founder and chair of all things Virgin: Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Megastores (which opened its latest location in Boston amid much fanfare last week), Virgin Entertainment Group, et al. Owner of the British Virgin Islands’ Necker Island (where daily rates start at $15,000). World-record breaker (in 1986, Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Challenger II crossed the Atlantic in the fastest recorded time; the following year, his Virgin Atlantic Flyer was the first hot-air balloon to cross the Atlantic, among other records). Author. Billionaire. Media phenomenon. Celebrated Brit, and international celebrity.

So when there’s so little left to say about Richard Branson, you simply let Richard Branson speak for himself.

Q: Why’d you choose Boston for a Virgin store?

A: Well, we should’ve done it, I suppose, 20 years ago. We knew that the last time the British came to Boston, they got chucked out, so we thought we’d go and experiment on New Yorkers and people in Los Angeles and in Paris and London first, get the product absolutely right, and we felt we were now just about ready to come to Boston and be appreciated by Bostonians and to be given a welcome and not to be thrown back into the sea.

Q: What do you think Boston can offer a store like this, and vice versa?

A: I never saw the old Tower Records here; I think it was a good store, but it was maybe a bit left over in the ’60s, and hadn’t really — you know, it wasn’t a sort of 21st-century store. So, all around here you’ve got universities, you’ve got musical colleges, and people want a fantastic range of music, and I think we’ve got perhaps the best range of music in the world here; people want to ideally be able to come in and listen to the music before they buy it, and we’ve got I think three million tracks which people can listen to. People want knowledgeable staff who know about the music — we’ve got that. People want a pleasant environment where they can maybe have a coffee and chat up somebody in the bar or whatever, and I think we have that as well.

Q: How often do you think you’ll get to Boston now?

A: Well, now we have an airline coming here, and now we have a store, now we’re starting to look at Bostonian bands to sign to our record company — we’re hoping we can persuade Howie Day to sign with us; he’s very good — so I expect we’ll be coming here a lot more often.

Q: Speaking of signing people, what artist are you most proud of having signed?

A: Hmm. Moby. Phil Collins. Peter Gabriel. Rolling Stones. Lenny Kravitz. White Stripes. Janet Jackson. I think Heather Nova’s great. And more experimental bands, like XTC, and a lot of bands you wouldn’t have really heard of in America, particularly. The Stereophonics are a fantastic band which we signed recently, and they’re enormous in Europe, and we hope to break them over in America, so they’re certainly worth checking out.

Q: You’re often described as flamboyant, unorthodox, driven. What are some words you’d use to describe yourself?

A: Ah, I like to think that I’m unconventional, in that I like to take on the establishment and try to make sure that any sector that we attack will never be the same again because Virgin’s moved in on it and hopefully improved it. We like to make sure that everything we do, we can be proud of, and create something which enhances the Virgin brand. I mean, our aim is to create the best brand in the world and not the biggest. And I would ideally like people to say that I’m good with people, that I’m a good motivator of people. You know, I like to praise, not criticize; I like to look for the best in people. One of my biggest faults is that I never say no, I always say yes, and therefore I end up doing maybe slightly too many things, but I think the fact that Virgin is doing so many different things makes it so much more interesting than if it was just doing one. Like most big brands, you know, Nike specializes in shoes, Microsoft in computers, Coca-Cola in soft drinks; it’s great to be running a brand that is so diversified. In two months’ time, we’re going to take on the cell-phone market here in America, and try to give the cell-phone companies a run for their money. You know, it’s a new challenge, and it’ll mean that I’ll spend a couple of weeks traveling around America, which will be nice.

Q: What motivates you, both professionally and personally?

A: I don’t see what I do as work; I just see it as a way of life, and I’m having a lot of fun — I enjoy every minute of what I’m doing. So when we started the airline, Virgin Atlantic, the aim was to create the best airline in the world, and obviously we have to pay the bills, but the principal focus was to create something we were very proud of, and that anyone who flew on it could say, that was a good experience. And I think if you can create the best, I mean, the best never fails: the best hotels never fail, the best clubs, the best airlines. Personally, you know, I’m very fortunate — I’ve got a great family, great children, lovely parents, we holiday a lot together, and I have my adventures — my ballooning, my boating adventures. I love sports, I love seeing what I’m capable of as an adventurer, as well as as an entrepreneur.

Q: What advice would you offer someone who wants to start his or her own business?

A: I think you want to get around you a group of people who you can trust. You want to make sure those people 100 percent believe in what you’re doing. That there’s a reason for what you’re doing. That you’re going to make a difference in the marketplace. That preferably it hasn’t been done before — there’s no point really in just duplicating something that’s been done before, unless you’re sure that you’re going to do it a lot better than it’s been done before. Everybody will tell you why you won’t succeed, so don’t get too deterred from that. Don’t take no for an answer when you go to the bank and try to borrow some money — go to another bank and another bank and another bank. Don’t take no for an answer when you go to your first lot of investors — keep going around. Make sure that what you’re doing is something you’re going to enjoy doing, because you’re going to be working 20 hours a day doing it, most likely. And preferably, if you can do something that’s more of a hobby [to you than] a job, that would be the perfect thing to get involved in.

Q: How has the business world changed for you since September 11?

A: Um, well, obviously we have three airlines in the world, and they were all badly affected. We had to move quickly to make some quite tough decisions. Come January the first, it was like a new dawn. It just feels like a page has been turned, people want to forget — not forget, but put the last few months, the last year behind them. And our planes are full again, and I really think that things are getting back to a sense of normality now. But it was a hard few months for everybody in the world, really. Music, interestingly, wasn’t really affected; in fact, if anything, people went and bought more records because they wanted to listen to music, give their friends music, and forget about what had gone on.

Q: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?

A: I have a tiny little island in the British Virgin Islands, and it’s exquisite, and it’s our place where we go and draw up the drawbridge, bring a bunch of friends, and that’s the place where we regenerate batteries. Having said that, I’m having a great time in Boston.

Q: I was going to ask you — how does one get an invitation to your island?

A: Um ... well, if I wasn’t married, I’d say come along down!

Q: What’s your best stress reliever?

A: I think sport, really — tennis, cricket, ballooning, skiing, sailing. Any kind of sport. And actually, the Caribbean’s a pretty good stress reliever.

Q: Whose CDs are in your CD player right now?

A: I’ve got the new Moby album, which comes out in a couple months’ time. It’s a great record. But we’re a bit biased, because we’ve set up this new record company, V2 Records, and he’s one of our biggest stars at the moment.

Q: What’s your biggest regret?

A: Quite genuinely, I honestly don’t think I have any enormous regrets. I mean, I’ve just been very, very, very, very fortunate. I haven’t ever lost anybody who’s close to me; my wife has, and she says that until you’ve actually lost a parent or something, you won’t really understand it. So I’ve been very fortunate there. You know, I nearly was the first man to fly around the world in a balloon; I got pipped at the post, but strangely, I don’t really regret it — it was fantastic, the experience, the challenge, the years of preparation, the flying over the Himalayas, flying over Mount Everest, flying over Mount Fuji, flying over the Atlas Mountains, and I’m just lucky enough that if I try something and I fail, I can move on to another challenge. I’ve been fortunate to spend time with the people I most admire in the world — I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time with Nelson Mandela, and that’s been an enormous privilege, and I do quite a lot of things with him. I just actually don’t have the right to have any regrets, because life’s pretty good.

Since she apparently isn’t going to Necker Island any time soon, Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com