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

Sunday Independent 14/3/10

I am told I was the most nervous looking presenters ever on the Dragons’ Den. But I also have the honour of being described as having one of the best ideas ever on the show. Here’s the story of my Den experience.

I had travelled up from Galway the night before and stayed over, to be all set for my big day. After pacing the floor for over three hours I was eventually told “you’re on”. Climbing the stairs into the Den my legs started to wobble. I stopped on the fifth step from the top and thought about turning back. But, somehow, I continued on, now breathless, up and into the Den. Even though we have seen it on telly when you go through that door you are shocked at how big and daunting it is.

And there they sit, the Dragons. To me they appeared like five vultures looking at lunch. On television it looks like you are standing in front of the Dragons but please watch how many steps it takes when somebody wants to hand a sample to Niall O’Farrell, one of the five. It could be nine strides, about 25 feet.

In that moment, before you start, you realise that in all the rehearsals you did in your living room, you never thought to actually do one shouting at someone across a car park. The studio lights are fierce. Then your heart skips a thump when you notice the silent Dr. Who like Daleks – the cameras. They are gliding around, whizzing above and beneath you. It is now all suddenly very quiet. My brain is telling me to start talking. I can feel my hands shaking, but worse my tongue seems to have swollen.

It was a great idea to go on the Den when I signed up last October. But now I am faced by these dragons and my voice is wobbling. All I am thinking is, can I get out of here? There’s no way back.

I applied to go on the show because I have been delivering oil and working with central heating boilers for a quarter of a century. In the last ten years I have noticed I have been called out to bleed a lot of boilers that have become air locked. In the past the oil delivery lorry drivers would bleed the boiler for you but for insurance reasons they don’t do that now. Most people have to call out a plumber or installer. It costs anything from €50 – €100 for such a call out. So I invented the Boiler Bleed that costs just €29.90 and fits onto every boiler and eliminates air lock problems. On the show I called it the Kev Valve. I thought that was a good name. I didn’t realise that over the internet people with a boiler problem will search the word “boiler” so we had to have that as the first word. I now have www.boilerbleed.com.

The Boiler Bleed is now ready for the mass market. There are 750,000 boilers in Ireland and a massive 18 million in the UK. When I eventually did get those figures out on the show the Vultures no longer looked on me as lunch but more as a meat factory. This could give them a nice return on their investment of €40,000. I was very pleased when two of the Dragons, Bobby and Sean, made an offer. We struck a deal and we were now in business.

My time in the Den was both one of the worst moments and one of the best moments in my life. Yes I was nervous but the crew from Shinawil, through pre-production, filming and since, have been so polite and helpful it has made it all a great experience.

It is inevitable that boilers will run out of fuel from time to time and will develop air locks. For just €29.90 the problem can be solved once and for all with the Boiler Bleed.