Gavin Duffy – Entrepreneur, Media Coach, Dragon's Den Presenter, Public Speaker

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.