Famously, on one of Richard Branson’s school reports, one of his teachers predicted that he would be a millionaire or end up in prison. Rather neatly, of course, he managed to achieve both. My prediction for Emu#3 is that he will end up as a national treasure (probably more Michael Crawford than Thora Hird), or as a dancer in a cage or on a pole at one of Soho’s seedier clubs. Probably not both though.
I am partly drawn to this conclusion by his latest reverse achievement, where he arrived home clutching his certificate that said that he’d taken part in a cycling safety scheme. This is what gentle readers of a certain age would call a cycling proficiency test, and in my day, upon passing, you got a little red triangular badge when you passed, that you could wear next to your Tufty badge, and henceforth, you pretty much had the freedom of the roads.
All good, though, on further questioning, we realised that a certificate saying he’d taken part wasn’t quite on a par with a certificate to say he’d passed. Indeed, he’d rather dramatically failed, which, as far as I’m aware, is only one notch up from failing at ‘Show and Tell’. Turning the certificate over, it appeared he’d spent the entire test cycling on the wrong side of the road.
‘Sorry Dad’ he said. ‘It’s just that I had a lot on my mind at the time’.
Still, he has a certificate. And it’s on his wall. We keep swapping it around to annoy him.
The Emu 