The first few months of 1983 were dark days for the UK’s queer communities as the future of their only national newspaper Gay News looked increasingly precarious.

Clearly something was about to change – but what? Gay News staff were keen to put in their own take-over bid; rumour had it that owner, Dennis Lemon, was in talks with other potential new owners – and then there were some weeks when it looked like the paper wasn’t going to be produced at all. These were the perfect circumstances for people to speculate – and that’s exactly what they did.

Given that Gay News was such a high-profile publication for the country’s queer communities, it seemed almost inevitable that speculation would focus on one of the country’s high-profile entrepreneurs – Richard Branson. Branson certainly wasn’t new to queer enterprise. He was at that time the owner of the country’s largest gay club, Heaven (and would subsequently acquire the up-market gay venue The Gardens in Kensington.)

But would he be interested in courting the queer community by saving one of their most valuable community assets, or was he only interested in queer ventures that would turn a profit?

The profitability of Gay News is hard to estimate, since owner Dennis Lemon was reluctant to release the company accounts. And it’s pretty safe to conclude that the bid for a staff takeover was motivated more by the desire to maintain a community asset than generate a large profit.

How much Branson weighed up the pros and cons (or, indeed, whether he weighed them up at all) is something we shall never know. What we do know is that in February 1983 his company, Virgin, released a statement declaring that he was ‘definitely not’ interested.

His decision meant that Gay News went, instead, to Nigel Ostrer, before being sold on again to become part of Gay Times. In the course of its transition it lost most of its political spirit and ‘heritage’. Would that have been maintained under Branson’s ownership? I doubt not.