When publicity machine Richard Branson decided to abseil off a Las Vegas hotel in 2007 to promote the new Virgin America domestic airline, you'd have thought that nothing could possibly go wrong.

Richard climbed 407ft up the tower of the Palms hotel dressed in a Bond-esq tux giving a thumbs up to the cameras, but after leaping from the roof in a strange combo of bungee and abseiling and flinging some plane tickets away, a rather hefty wind decided to show the billionaire that pride comes before a fall. And a fall comes before scraping your ass massively down the side of a building.

Richard's facials say it all and you can be sure some technical bod got the hairdryer treatment as Richard did the worst impression ever of someone not being bothered.

After probably firing a few people and recuperating on his island, he was able to come up with this quip (with the aid of a PR no doubt): "I never thought I would take the saying 'flying by the seat of my pants' quite so literally."

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