Posts Tagged ‘Dragons Den Series II’
We hate Being Told We’re FAT!
One of the most talked about issues this summer has been the Stop the Spread Campaign from Safe Food, the State’s public health promotion and monitoring unit. Safe Food has boldly stated that two out of three of us are unhealthily overweight. In previous summers when they spent tax payers’ money politely and meekly telling us to make sure we cooked the food thoroughly on the barbeque, they were great folks.
But this year they have had the audacity to tell us to measure ourselves around the middle and for women, if you are over 32 inches, or men over 37 inches, this indicates you are probably harming your health through being chronically overweight.
Some journalists have questioned the one measurement fits all approach sanctioned by the WHO, the World Health Organisation. But is this further proof of our denial. Do we simply hate to be told we are FAT?
When the WHO recently pronounced that mobile phone use is injurious to our health not one journalist questioned it. But because we are in denial about our weight some of the journalists have even questioned the independence of the WHO.
So let’s be clear what the WHO says, and in turn, what safe Food is promoting. They are asking us all to measure around our middle. That is not what we commonly call our waistline. So, measure around your middle at your navel or bellybutton. If a woman measures more than 32inches or a man measures more than 37 inches, that means there is an indication that your belly is protruding because so much fat has already built up around your heart, lungs and intestine that on top of that it is now forcing your tummy to protrude.
Now we can continue to deny it all day and all night long but they are the facts according to the WHO. With that much excess fat around your internal organs you are more likely to suffer coronary disease, diabetes or cancer. One third of all cancers are weight related.
But because of our state of denial we start claiming, “I have heavy bones” or “I retain a lot of water”. When the WHO stated brain tumours can result from excessive use of a mobile phone no one was daft enough to say “but I have heavy bones, my skull has an above average thickness so the electro-magnetic field won’t get through my thick head as much”. However these are the very arguments many of us use to resist accepting the fact that we are overweight.
Unbeknownst to ourselves our nation and our children are getting fatter and fatter. Safe Food has stuck to its guns and told us to measure ourselves as instructed. It is merely an indicator and if you are over the 32 or 37 inches but you believe you are not overweight, the best thing to do is to go to your Doctor and get that verified. If your doctor, who will also take into consideration your age, fitness, height etc, tells you you’re not overweight isn’t that fantastic! Keep up the good work but don’t attack a public health agency when it is merely trying to draw our attention to a serious and costly health issue for our population.
DJ & Sarah’s Troubles
My former colleague on Dragons’ Den, Sarah Newman and her partner DJ Carey, were in the news last week. AIB went to the Commercial Court to foreclose on a debt of 9.5 million euro. There were acres of coverage for the story because, of course, they are a very high profile couple. She was judge on Dragons’ Den for its first two series and her partner is one of the greatest sportsmen this country has ever produced.
Now it has been reported that the couple weren’t expecting a hearing of the case on Monday the 9th last but rather a listing. So when the case went ahead they must have been taken by surprise. But Sarah and DJ should have made themselves available to the media immediately. Instead they kept their heads down hoping it would all blow over. What happens then is a media free for all.
If you have been regularly in the media and using it to promote yourself or your business you can’t then go to ground, so to speak, on a bad news day.
It will sound like I am promoting my fellow columnist here in the paper when I say look at how Ivan Yeats handled his problems just back in January.
Actually Ivan’s problems were far wider ranging in that many people were losing their jobs. Now in both cases it was the same bank AIB that was playing hard ball but Ivan faced the music with great dignity, integrity, honesty and empathy for his colleagues.
The amount of support and concern for Ivan and his wife Deirdre was absolutely amazing and well deserved. Very different to the coverage for Sarah and DJ, described as a couple who “enjoyed the high life” which was not deserved. It would be hard to come across a harder working couple than both DJ and Sarah.
I hope they will both pull through this awful mess. In many a game DJ was well down at half time but the fighter in him would come back and get a win. I know he and Sarah will apply the same determination in overcoming this crisis and I sincerely wish them every success.
Are We Now the “Smug” Dragons?
Tonight, RTE 1, 9:30pm, sees programme three of the current series of Dragons’ Den where myself and new Dragon, Norah Casey, are battling one another, yet again, over a potential investment. The audience figures this year are up by about, an amazing, 200,000 viewers across the week on last year. This is, in the main down to, a primetime slot on Sunday nights and a repeat at 8pm on Thursdays.
However I ask the question are we Dragons not looking a bit too smug this year? Here we are in the middle of the mother of all recessions and if someone is prepared to set up a business in these challenging times should they not be lauded rather than be lambasted as happens sometimes in the Den. I can’t excuse it, but even though I am integral part of it, I question the programme’s tone this year.
The producers are obviously feeling the pressure of the primetime slot and only want to feature the brilliant or the barmy. Anything in between is edited down or out. So you only get situations where the Dragons are battling with one another over a very good idea or you get the opposite, us Dragons, giving the false appearance we are queuing up to put the final nail in the coffin of someone’s dream. There is no middle ground because 21st century television demands jeopardy, you must always either win big or lose big.
Of course the producers are constrained by a strict format dictated by the programme owners, Sony Television, who stipulate how it is to be shot. In fairness who could argue with them, their show is now a success in 22 countries, so they know what works and what doesn’t but Ireland is in an unusual place at this time. More than ever start up businesses need to be encouraged and that is still must be the primary objective of Dragons’ Den.
It is alright, perhaps, for the BBC Dragons to be arrogant. That’s the UK but Ireland is still a community, one large family. I fear we, Irish Dragons, may be falling into that trap of appearing arrogant. The opening sequence has each of us with our arms folded, staring down the camera lens. This is the classic, formatted, Dragons’ Den look but for Ireland I would have preferred to see the Dragons with their sleeves rolled up working with some of their previous investments.
Also because it is series three we have all become very comfortable both in the Den and with one another. So if someone comes in and they have forgotten their figures, an all too frequent occurrence, because we five all know one another so well now, we are more likely to look and smile at one another but this can be misinterpreted as perhaps laughing and the promoter struggling in front of us. I know this is never, ever the case but it can appear like that.
These are not excuses it is just setting a record straight. For a fact I know both Sean Gallagher and Bobby Kerr do countless talks for free in Universities, colleges and schools and with Enterprise Boards the length and breadth of the country doing their bit to promote enterprise. Niall O’Farrell, has in my view, in this series made at least two investments because he was taken by the determination and drive of the promoters even if the rest of us saw no hope of a financial return in those two businesses. Norah Casey, who I am only still getting to know, but I can vouch I have witnessed her being very generous in one business dealing.
Another consequence of a primetime slot is the show gets constant promotion. But producers will always pick the sensational lines for a promo’. So when Bobby Kerr asks, “ why do I smell a rat here?” that can be edited to, “I smell a rat here” and worse is repeated in numerous promo’s, out of context, which I believe is not fair to Brian Lesley, the promoter, who was proposing modest charge to people who needed their debts managed.
The Year That Was..2010
Independent Group Local Newspapers 29/1/2011
This week I am going to look back on 2010. I am so conscious of what an awful year it was for thousands – many losing their job, others losing sleep about their mortgage and their mounting debts and, this Christmas, so many looking at the prospect of losing members of their family to emigration in the coming year. So I feel almost guilty that I have had such an eventful and productive year. The Editor has pointed out that there will be a fuller review of all the year’s international, national and, of course, local news here in the paper but has asked me to write a personal log of my year.
January started with me beginning to write this column. I have thoroughly enjoyed it and thank you so much for your most positive feedback! Like me, you too are fed up with the constant negativity of the national media.
In February I inadvertently made the headlines. The Irish Daily Mail ran two pages of photographs of me meeting, on a street in Dublin, with Sean Fitzpatrick, the now disgraced former boss of toxic bank, Anglo Irish. The story sarcastically suggested I was probably meeting Sean Fitzpatrick to see would he invest some of his pension money in my Dragons’ Den products. Though it was a chance meeting, I still had to inform the media that I had never met Sean Fitzpatrick before (or since) and I had never been a client of Anglo Irish. Eventually the story petered out, but for the first time in my life I knew what it was to be “paparazzi-ed”.
In March, during the run of Dragons’ Den on RTÉ, I hit the jackpot! Noelle O’Connor walked in to present her idea for a healthy, non synthetic, non smelling, 100% natural, organic sunless tan. In the first three months in pharmacies over the summer, TanOrganic generated over €1m in sales. It became the number one selling tan in Ireland. So, despite being in the middle of the world’s worst recession, the point was proven again – if you have a good Irish-manufactured product, regardless of the economy it will sell and sell.
At the end of April Gerry Ryan died. We now know this was probably as a result of cocaine use. I would never condone substance abuse but I am not really qualified to comment because I am one of a tiny minority in Ireland who has never drank alcohol or smoked tobacco and has certainly never tried any form of drug. I do have many vices just not those more common ones! What Gerry did was wrong. But I worked with Gerry and I will always remember him as one of the greatest radio presenters.
In May I was asked to go on the Late Late Show for the finalists in the Transition Year Young Entrepreneurs competition. One student had a brilliant idea, “The Wrap”. It is a little plastic thing for wrapping up and avoiding tangling of the wire of your earphones for your phone or I-pod. I was delighted the following week to introduce him to Vodafone, and now his concept is now a real product out there on the market. It proves yet again that our schools are teeming with boys and girls with great business ideas.
In June I started my summer-long involvement with Celebrity Bainisteoir. Definitely one of the highlights of my year was the warm welcome I got from the Roche Emmets football club and its community. I still feel the team and I let ourselves down, and that such a great club deserved to go further in the competition, but I loved every moment of my involvement. The experience reaffirmed for me what a great contribution the GAA makes to local communities across the country.
On the 11th July the nation witnessed the greatest daylight robbery ever. Sports fans from all over the country agreed that Louth was robbed of a deserved Leinster title and Meath also suffered ‘winning’ what became a sullied championship. We simply have to introduce video evidence into these key games.
In August I was asked by RTÉ Radio 1 to fill in for Ryan Tubridy, who was moving over to 2FM, before John Murray was available to start the programme. I hadn’t presented a radio programme for well over a decade and if the truth be told enjoyed it far too much. It was a pleasure to work with Annmarie Power, Aonghus McAnally and their team in Donnybrook.
In September I was doing the job interviews for the Apprentice for TV3. One of the final four and the eventual winner was Michelle Massey. On her CV it stated she had done some modelling so I had to ask her was there anything in her past that could embarrass a future employer. She then revealed her dalliance with Playboy TV. I can tell you now I was never, ever expecting that one. I had to keep it all secret until the programme aired in December.
In late October my fellow Dragons and I really felt the pressure when RTÉ informed us that for 2011 the programme was moving to a prime time slot, 9:30pm on Sunday nights. We were all concerned that in the recession people might not come forward with good ideas. But when we did get to the Den for recordings, we were mightily relieved at the high standard of business ideas. It is television, so the producers will still feature the wacky ideas, but this year there were plenty of sound business ideas. Also RTÉ confirmed that there will be a follow up series looking back on many of the people who featured in series one and two.
In November we had the ‘good’ news that it was in the ECB’s interest to come to our nation’s rescue and bail us out but at a price. Personally I was delighted with the development, because I see it as the turning point on the road to recovery. The media kept pushing a line that we should default. We can’t default but we must restructure our debt in approximately 18 to 24 months from now. So we take this deal and in two years time after Portugal, Spain and maybe even Italy have required ECB/IMF assistance then we can, as a group of countries availing of the bailout, force the senior bondholders to restructure our debt. They will be forced to write a large percentage of it off. Of the group, which country has the strongest exports? Yes, Ireland. I assure you we will eventually come out of this valley of tears and our little nation can be great again.
In December Noel Dempsey followed his cabinet colleague, Dermot Ahern, and announced he wouldn’t contest the General Election. Dermot Ahern would have got re-elected but Noel Dempsey was doomed. He claimed he was doing it because he is over 55 years of age. The facts are party sources in Meath-West were forecasting that he could only muster, at best, 2,000 votes. Worse again his running mate, Deputy Johnny Brady, would poll better. So Dempsey, a former poll topper, couldn’t face the ignominy of being eliminated in an early count and bowed out on a fat pension. We so badly need the New Year’s General Election to draw a line under all the fall out of the Celtic Tiger and start on the road to recovery. To you and yours, a Happy New Year and all the best for 2011.