Nic Hall’s Box Bosh

THE DRAGONS are back, and in a ludicrous twist of events, they’ve dumped the only one who puts any money in. Richard Farleigh (the one with the bizarre hair) has been binned in favour of one of the BBC’s favourite ways of ruining a good format - “fair representations of ethnic diversity on screen” – i.e. shoe-horning people into shows to make up for previous decades of endemic passive racism at BBC towers.

James Kaan takes over from Farleigh, who was apparently gutted at losing his seat. In the two years Farleigh was on the show he put up £130,000 and yet they dumped him at the first opportunity.

I was at a BBC creative day the other week and I got chatting to one of the producers on Dragons’ Den. When I was asked what I thought about the show, the producer seemed genuinely shocked that I was complaining that Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden were bile filled, senselessly rude and brimming with self-importance. They couldn’t understand that the audience wasn’t so blood thirsty that they wanted every pitcher to be publicly humiliated. Don’t get me wrong, I love nothing more than a chuckle at the stupid ideas and the liars being torn into, but a lot of the time, Peter Jones opts to say something that will humiliate rather than simply saying no thank you. Attack the idea by all means, but there really is no need to make personal comments. I hope that Jones’s great big flop of a show (Tycoon on ITV) will have humbled him a little.

I honestly don’t know why they persist with Deborah Meaden; I suppose they feel that they have to have a female Dragon. Rachel Elnaugh, the previous incumbent of that seat, with her events business, Red Letter Days, actually went bust, and had to be bailed out by Jones and Paphitis. The problem is – aside from Meaden’s bile fuelled nature – she never actually seems to put any money up. She trots out the “I don’t know anything about that area” line, and swiftly pulls out. Even when she does “know about that area”, she then uses the fact that she knows all about it to pick holes and declare herself out. I know they say that you don’t get rich by giving all your money away, but surely never dispensing cash defeats the object of the show. The fact that they’ve replaces Farleigh with Kaan, and not binned off Meaden, means that the producers value the acerbic put-downs more than they favour genuine investment.

Since the death of TV composer Ronnie Hazlehurt the other week – I’ve realised that TV shows these days really don’t have good theme tunes. Hazlehurt wrote some classics, including the Likely Lads, Yes Minister, and Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em. In days gone by, a good telly show would have a good theme tune. Would Doctor Who have been anywhere near as popular without its psychedelic track? All we ever get these days are leftovers from old themes, ones sang by Dennis Waterman, pop tracks, or in the case of Life on Mars, a pretty decent tune but one which harks back to the heyday of the theme. I propose that we, as a nation, start a campaign to find the new Ronnie Hazlehurst, so we’re not stuck with the complete nothingness like the “theme” from Dragons’ Den.

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