Deborah Meaden is a ‘marketing guru'. We know that because Evan Davies gravely intones it in the opening credits to every episode of Dragon's Den. Except that last night we found out that she wasn't; not really.
In BBC2's Dragon's Den: the Dragon's Story - an otherwise interesting series that I suppose is meant to inspire up and coming entrepreneurs in some way - we found out that the marketing guru who had ‘made her fortune in the hospitality and leisure business' was nothing of the sort. In fact, for ‘hospitality and leisure industry' read chain of ordinary-looking caravan parks in the south-west. Also hers was no heart-warming rags to riches tale (unlike James Caan and Theo Paphitis) - her parents had owned the park before she borrowed some money from the bank to buy them out.
As for her marketing credentials that are so proudly boasted about in every single episode of the show, Davies had to admit that this wasn't really the case although the show did go onto describe how she's been involved in the repackaging of one of her Den investments - some sinister Voodoo dolls that you can stick faces of your enemies on and are therefore ideal stocking fillers.
It all seemed rather patchy to me and I was left concluding that in the scramble to tell a good story, some over-claiming had taken place. As this isn't in the scale of Cookie the Blue Pater cat or the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross farrago, I won't be complaining to the BBC Trust - I'll leave that to Friday when Children In Need is back on, groan...
