Richard Branson to stop ‘turning girls upside down’

Excerpts from a report in The Guardian:

In the clearest sign yet of aviation’s changing culture, the Virgin Atlantic owner Sir Richard Branson has said he will almost certainly no longer be “turning girls upside down”, signalling an end to a long-established fixture of the airline’s flight promotion.

Branson’s last believed public inversion of a female model, wearing a bikini and Russian hat, was in 2012 to promote planned flights to Moscow. By 2014, he was already raising his own kilt in Edinburgh at the launch of an ill-fated domestic Virgin airline offshoot, Little Red.

He said: “You just adapt with the times. And I might soon be getting to an age where I might pull a disc.”

Branson stressed that he was still in good physical shape, having just climbed Mount Kenya, adding: “I can still turn girls upside down. But times have moved on.”