User:The C of E/virgin

The Church of St John the Evangelist is a Church of England parish church in Paddington, London, England. It was built in 1831 and is a Grade II listed building.

Richard Branson
The church had history with Richard Branson, the future chairman of Virgin Group. When Branson was first starting out, he was running a magazine called Student from a house he was renting from the Church of England despite being prohibited from using it for commercial purposes. When the Church Commissioners visited on an inspection, one of the hidden telephones he had been using rang from inside a cupboard. The Commissioners ended Branson's tenancy as a result. When news of this broke; the vicar of St John's, Reverend Cuthbert Scott, offered Branson a rent-free space in the church crypt to use as an office instead. Branson worked from a makeshift desk made of a piece of marble on top of two tombs.