A FEW HOURS LATER, Branson is behind the wheel of a golf cart, tearing through the Virgin Festival crowd to make his appointment with a mermaid.

Well, not exactly a mermaid, but actress Daryl Hannah, who has flown in to help Virgin spread the green word. In ten minutes, Branson and Hannah are scheduled to share the spotlight at a press conference over at the Green Spot, Virgin's eco–demonstration venue on the far side of the Pimlico infield.

As we trundle along, two of his handlers are riding on the back, nervously eyeing their watches. Everything's on a tight, tight schedule, and the chairman has a tendency to stray. Branson is an endearingly terrible driver of the British madcap school. "Where's the brake on this blasted thing!" he says at one point before slamming, half deliberately, into a hay bale.

"You golf?" I ask.

"Badly," he says, now veering wildly to miss a patchouli cloud of hacky-sackers. "But my grandmother made a hole-in-one once—in her nineties. I think it's still a record in England for the oldest one ever made."

Branson is obviously having a great time buzzing around the infield, investigating the whole weird scene. There are performance artists twirling from enormous, bobbing cantilever contraptions. There's a skateboard park and a "philanthropy mall," with booths manned by GreenDimes and various charities. There are jugglers, magicians, beach balls bouncing through the acres of reefer fog as sweaty cyclists ferry people and supplies on rickshaws. Overhead, an airplane buzzes above the racetrack with one of those long, trailing signs, which reads, SAVE A HORSE, RIDE A VIRGIN.

"I get satisfaction from all this," Branson tells me. "Life should be fun. People take themselves way too seriously—businesspeople especially."

Gradually, fans start to recognize Branson. Cell-phone cameras wink. Pens are proffered for his autograph. He waves, flashes the considerable dentistry, and eventually hops out of the golf cart to shake hands. Now there is positively a stampede of well-wishers. "I hope you're all enjoying yourselves!" says the happy impresario of Richardstock.

I look back at the Bond girls, and they only roll their eyes. "He does this all the time," one says. "You can't stop it."

At their urging, he finally hops back on the golf cart and we pull up to the Virgin Green Spot just in time for the press conference. It's a cozy compound of bamboo-and-hemp-canvas yurts billowing in the breeze, with tangled vines, potted ferns, anda sculpture of Pegasus made of recycled materials. Throughout this little eco-tabernacle, there are numerous displays concerning such matters as compact fluorescent bulbs, junk-mail reduction, and the problem of phantom loads (even when turned off, your appliances, stereos, and computers are still pulling juice). The stylish displays appear mod, slick, even lascivious. EVERYONE HAS A GREEN SPOT, one poster reads. WHERE'S YOURS?

Daryl Hannah is over by the microphones, looking tastefully frumpish in her faded jeans, cowboy hat, and Converse All Stars, her platinum-blond hair skimming the small of her back. Branson joins her against a backdrop of diesel generators and solar-panel grids, and the cameras from the entertainment press click away. (Although Branson's
a committed family man, it seems to be part of the Virgin PR strategy to show the chairman cavorting with models and Hollywood beauties.)

Besides, Hannah has environmental bona fides. A well-known activist and biofuel crusader who runs a sustainable-solutions blog, Hannah tells the assembled journalists about how she spent an action-packed week on Necker Island with the Branson family. "It was Death Week—he tried to kill me over and over again," with kiteboarding and other sports. "If we can just keep him down here on the ground—he's always going up."

At this, Branson smiles coyly and presses his palms into a namaste.

Hannah acknowledges that huge rock shows like this are not exactly good for the earth, but, she insists, "this is a very, very, very clean festival." The generators, she notes, all run on B99 biodiesel fuel, the plates are made of sugarcane, the cups and utensils of corn. Everything is compostable, with recycling stations set up all over the dusty infield.

"But you better eat fast," Branson butts in with a laugh, "because these utensils melt in this heat. The good news is, if the concession lines grow too long, you can eat your fork!"

Branson hops on a stationary bike that's hooked up to a blender and in a few minutes pedals up a fresh, human-powered smoothie made from the super-healthy açai berry, harvested wild from the Brazilian rainforest. He hands Hannah the purplish concoction, but she shakes her head. So Branson takes a big gulp of the swill and cheerfully smacks his lips, his mustache gooped in purple.