It’s entertainment but sadly many people will end up believing that business is really like that.

If ever you go and see a magic show they don’t realy cut the woman in half, it just looks like it.

Read Chart Throb by Ben Elton, obviously it’s not a book on business but it may give an insight into how a TV show can be made to look however they want it to.

Mick

While I don’t particularly hold the Dragon’s or the BBC in high regard there might actually be a reasonable explanation for the editing (perhaps their legal department felt it in appropriate/illegal to air the comment).

I can’t say I was impressed with what we did see of your pitch, you seemed not to know the cost of manufacturing your product and your brand seemed ill conceived.

Having filmed for the series in the summer in a disused filmset not far from James Bond, there is more than meets the eye.

In fact we were shown on Monday 19th November Episode 5, Series 5 towards the end and were trashed for about 90 seconds.

With regards to the comment about “cheap reality TV”, I think that actually an understatement, and our 1 hour pitch which was truncated to 90 seconds will explain a great deal.

We were the ones with the BamZ Interactive Insoles about 15 minutes from the end.

Why would I agree with the cheap reality TV tag? Well there are number of reasons,

The fact that there were three of us, all with extensive experience in our own diciplines. A European Patent Attorney, A market researcher and a designer.

Great! I hear you shout, a decent business program with specialists in their field. WRONG - we were never asked about any research done, or any patents or trademarks held. I fact one of the Dragons actually said “you’re an attorney, I’m not going to speak to you”

They didn’t probe any of the positives to look at the upside of the business in the longer term - why would you want to do that in a business program.

Most shockingly form the 90 seconds shown last week. They even invented comments at the end to make the dragons look reasonable, and not exposing their true characters.

In the last 5 seconds where Duncan said “I don’t like the product, and I don’t care for you”. (this never actually happened and was never said, and is complete BBC fiction).

It was in fact ‘I don’t like your product, I don’t like you Tariq and I hate you Noel’. What what you have seen is not even edited, this was seriously re-engineered afterwards. But I suppose that is a serious business program descending into “cheap reality TV”…

What would I know, I was only there for an hour!

The Jerky though is fantastic - try it.

They do sometimes (more and more these days it seems) let their ego’s get in the way and seem to be more focused on getting more air time for themselves than asking intelligent questions.

Even with this ridicule of them, apparently on the basis of their dress sense alone, when their advocate came to their assistance, *with suit* they ridiculed him as well constantly interrupting. Clearly no consistency there then! How can one get over one’s financials if one is not even allowed to complete a sentance?

Unfortunately it comes across as a game show and the producers seem to focus more and more on taking it that way.