“Space travel’s in my blood, there ain’t nothing I can do about it…”. As someone once sang in the late 1990s. They had me at “Space”. Travelling to space is the only thing I’ve ever REALLY wanted to do. It’s a generational thing: the generation before me dreamed of being train drivers, the generation after me crave celebrity. For me, it was and is Space. It influenced my influences (from David Bowie to Sir Richard Branson), and has even affected my business decisions (producing the movie, Moon).

And it’s why, when Branson announced he would be forming the world’s first Spaceline, Virgin Galactic, I knew I had to be there with my boots blacked. It’s also probably and bizarrely why I ended up on stage with the whole Galactic team at a press conference in the Mojave desert in 2004, as Sir Richard and the amazing designer Burt Rutan calmly explained how they would make the dream of commercial spaceflight a reality. I signed up on the spot and became an evangelist for the brand.

Since then, I’ve been spun in a centrifuge, survived 7g and hurtled inverted in a jet fighter or 2. All good preparation for the flight of my life. Launch date? Classified, but within the next 18 months. Am I afraid? Good God, no. I’m impatient. And yes. It’s a Return ticket.