How drunk Branson touched my girl – Jenson
JENSON Button has said he once confronted Sir Richard Branson after the tycoon drunkenly touched his then-girlfriend.
The racing driver, 37, has told how the Virgin boss put his hand on Jessica Michibata’s face after ‘blatantly flirting’ with her, and said the incident made Miss Michibata a ‘uncomfortable’.
The Formula One ace said Sir Richard d had been ‘very, very drunk’ when hee arrived at the exclusive Nobu restaurant t in Melbourne, on the eve of the 2009 Aus- tralian Grand Prix.
In his autobiography Life to the Limit,, which is currently being serialised, Mrr Button said the billionaire ‘lurched’ overr to the table where he sat with Miss Michi- bata, then aged 24, and a few others.
He said that after he left the table: ‘Sir Richard leaned over to Jessica and told her, “Stop staring at me”. She pointed out that she wasn’t staring at him. “Stop staring at me,” he insisted.
‘Although Jessica was a model she was quite shy, so this was making her feel uncomfortable. Especially when Sir Richard followed up his blatant flirting by putting his hand on her face.’
Mr Button said he had been ‘furious’ to spot the encounter and confronted Sir Richard, saying: ‘ Hold on … That’s enough. That’s well out of order.’
Mr Button wrote: ‘He was so hammered that he simply didn’t understand what the problem was.’ He said the tycoon then stood up and went over to another table where a diner, ‘presumably unaware of quite how drunk he was’, handed him a baby for a photo. He added: ‘Sir Richard staggered around the restaurant with it, gradually getting more and more careless, until at last he returned the child and left.’ Mr Button said Sir Richard later apologised for his behaviour.
The Virgin boss, now 67, previously recalled the incident in his own autobiography, Finding My Virginity, and said it led him to give up alcohol for six months.
He said: ‘Jenson and his girlfriend were sitting at the next table, enjoying a far quieter evening as he had to race the next morning. By contrast, through a mixture of tiredness, jetlag and drink, I soon found myself very, very inebriated. This wasn’t like me; I can’t remember ever getting that drunk before or since.’
He described telling Miss Michibata ‘how gorgeous she was’, adding: ‘Jenson understandably took offence and I decided to retreat quickly from the table (thankfully, we smoothed it out).’
Mr Button and Miss Michibata married in 2014, but split a year later. Sir Richard, who is married, was named in a 1996 sexual harassment claim in the US, brought by a former Virgin PR manager who claimed he groped her at a party in London. The case was later thrown out.
‘Made her feel uncomfortable’