WHEN I worked in Downing Street a decade ago, I invited an entrepreneur I admired to talk to civil servants and special advisers. I remember it being really hard to even round up an audience for the talk — the big room I’d booked ended up being half-empty.
That entrepreneur was Elon Musk, pictured — and if he was speaking at an event in London today, thousands of people would turn up. But back then, he was the little-known founder of the promising start-ups Tesla and SpaceX.
The first question I asked him in my talk was whether it was really true that he hoped to die on Mars. His answer got everyone laughing: “Yes, I do want to pass away on the red planet, but just not on impact.”
Obviously Musk has been in the news a lot recently after buying Twitter — and it pains me to say that it looks like he’s making a bit of a mess of things.
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