Diary: Oli Beale takes Branson to task over bad bhajis

Campaign, Friday, 30 January 2009 12:00AM

The last person the WCRS creative Oli Beale expected to be calling him at 8pm last Friday was the Virgin boss Richard Branson.

But his letter of complaint over the disgustingly way-below-low standard of food on a flight back from Mumbai had reached the big man himself.

Picture the scene. Branson and his wife are hosting a dinner party when he pulls out Beale's letter and reads it out to snorts and shrieks of laughter from his guests.

After he finishes reading the six-page letter (with pictures), Branson's wife, Joan, persuades him to call Beale and apologise. Cue Beale on Oxford Street, ducking into - of all places - McDonald's to take the call. In the letter, Beale describes in detail the "delights" he was served up on the ten-hour-and-25-minute "culinary journey of hell". Branson, to his credit, apologised profusely for the meal, which included bhajis and custard, a plateful of mustard and a "sponge shaft", and offered some as-yet-undefined compensation.

Beale's letter has since gone viral and he is now even in talks with a national newspaper about writing an "expose" of his experience.

This article was first published on Campaign