Hear about the Virgin and the Apricot?

CYNICAL folk in this world suspect that Richard Branson's sailing and ballooning exploits over the years have had nothing to do with the pioneering blood flowing through his veins. "Publicity stunts designed to promote his Virgin empire," they howl. Publicity stunts? Hardly.

Unless Richard is taking the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" axiom to a silly extreme, how could the sight of the Virgin logo wrinkled up in a ball in an Algerian field . . . or sinking in the Atlantic Ocean . . or in flames somewhere else, promote an image of a burgeoning, healthy, successful business empire? I don't get it myself.

"The Eagle has landed," he said last week only hours after his round-the-world-balloon-trip came to grief. When he radioed in to the Virgin control centre in London to have a chat, after the crash-landing in Algeria, he tried to explain exactly what had caused the problem. "What happened," he was asked. "Something went wrong," he said. "But we're not sure quite what." Mmm.

Peter Lindstrand also suspected something had gone wrong but he was damned if he was going to admit it. Peter is the son of Per, Branson's pilot in the balloon, and he appeared on Sky News to talk about the whole business. He managed to put such a whirly spin on things that the IRFU should consider hiring him as a PR consultant - he would have made that defeat to Italy seem like a positive thing after all.

"You must be disappointed," the Sky newsreader asked Peter. "Yes, in some ways I'm disappointed, but in other ways it has been very successful in certain aspects of the project," he replied. (It has to be said, however, that he failed to pinpoint any of these successful aspects.)

"Have you spoken to your father yet," the newsreader continued. "No," said Peter. "But you would expect him to be fairly buoyant about this? Despite the fact they had to come down so quickly," asked the Sky man, whose choice of "buoyant" was highly inappropriate, and insensitive, in the circumstances.

"Oh yes, I'm sure he'll be quite content about the project and the way it has gone and the way, it has been professionally handled.

You had to feel sorry for Peter and the rest of the crew at the Virgin control centre. They'd hardly arrived back from the up-up-and-away ceremony in Marakesh when they learned it was all over. And there they were, with all their hi-tech equipment and enough food supplies for a month when in the end one KitKat and one can of Virgin Cola would have got them through the duration of Richard's trip.

Tony Bullimore was the second adventurer in difficulties last week when the Australians had to haul the upturned sailor from the seas. ITV entitled Snatched From The Sea, which took an in-depth look at the rescue and the life story of Tony the Sailor, or the "short, chunky adventurer" as they called him.

We were told that Tony has crossed the Atlantic 27 times and has run up over 250,000 miles at sea. But, having heard his history of watery mishaps, it would seem that at least 249,000 of those nautical miles were done on board rescue ships.

"In 1976 he was rescued from a life raft in mid-Atlantic after his yacht caught fire," the show's presenter, Bob Crampton, told us. "Then in 1986 his trimaran, called Apricot, also nearly cost him his life when it drifted on to rocks on the French coast.

"Then in 1989 it was disaster again - a new trimaran, the Spirit of Apricot, flipped over during a trial run after a refit. Tony survived but one crew man died," we heard as we saw a picture of Tony's boat upside down in the sea. Then we were shown a series of interviews with Tony, over the years, when he talked about his many narrow escapes.

At this point a "Tony's in trouble again" pattern was beginning to develop, something Crampton asked Sir Robin Knox-Johnson, the round-the-world-sailor, to comment on. "Isn't it the case that if you take risks like that you can't expect to be rescued every time? It's been a very costly exercise," he asked.

"Well, then I think you'd have to ban people walking on ponds - 16 people have drowned walking their dogs on ponds in the last cold spell," he said, a bit snootily.

If Tony is interested in a job on dry land he might decide to apply for the vacant managerial post at St James' Park, now that Kevin Keegan has called it a day. Once he'd get over allegations of adultery he could do a fine job. "There's a quote in one of the papers today where one of the punters said: "Watching Newcastle now is going to be like watching somebody in bed `with my wife'," the Mail on Sunday's Bob Cass told us on Hold the Back Page last Thursday.

On Saturday's Football Focus we saw a Newcastle fan responding to the shock news by having her magpie tattoo removed at a clinic in the city's Freeman Hospital. Others were getting rid of their Keegan tattoos, but it was hard to have any sympathy for them as they had lumps of their skin detached from their bodies. Who in their right mind would get the name of a football manager tattooed on to part of their anatomy and then want it taken off? Can you imagine the condition of a Manchester City fan this season? Five managers since August? Blimey they'd need skin grafts to reconstruct their bodies.

Back on Hold the Back Page, Henry Winter of the Daily Telegraph saw this tattoo business as part of the Newcastle supporters' uniform as he spoke about the impact Keegan had had on the city in his time there. "A non-match day in Newcastle is like a match day in any, of the city. You just wander down the streets and there are whole families all in their black and white - the parents have tattoos and the kids are all called Kevin or Alan," he said (a bit unfortunate, that, for the daughters of Newcastle).

In the middle of this description of just how much football means to the Geordies, Winter may have stumbled upon the real reason Keegan quit the club. "It's incredible the number of people who turn up to watch the team train. Theirs is the only training ground I know that has a hot dog stand," he revealed.

A hot dog stand at a sporting venue? Mmm. Clearly Keegan couldn't take any more of those post-training snacks then. Squeak, squeak.