Posts Tagged ‘RTE’
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.
Ivor’s expenses
There has been a lot said and written about the now disgraced Fianna Fail Senator Ivor Callely. He has protested he is the victim of a media witch hunt.
It is true he has been the focus of journalists’ attempts to expose the corrupt culture of easy expenses paid as a type of top up to our already overpaid politicians.
And therein is the problem. During the boom many in public service complained that they were grossly underpaid when compared with their “colleagues” in the private sector.
And so a culture was allowed to grow where it became normal practise to pay generous expenses, often unvouched, to politicians but also executives in state employment.
There was a belief that if we can’t pay the going rate then we will make up the gap through expenses and, wait for it, bonuses.
The latter is farcical. Many HSE and local authority executives have received large bonuses, worse, still do. For what you may ask? But the practise is widespread.
As tens of thousands of men and women have lost their jobs in the private sector surely the public servants must now accept that having a permanent, pensionable job is actually the greatest job perk anyone can have.
Many teachers have seen their pay cut by about 12%. That’s a hefty pay cut, especially, if like most of us, you were living beyond your means and on top of that have a big mortgage. In such circumstances any pay cut bites deep and really hurts.
But the reality is our teachers are, even after the pay cuts, some of the best paid in Europe. They work very hard but, because of the nature of their job, have months of holidays over the year.
Compared to the private sector worker who has already seen take home pay cut by as much as twenty per cent and works 49 weeks of the year but, probably, spends 52 weeks worrying will he or she have a job next year, the public sector worker has by far the best job terms.
The so called ‘witch hunt’ that Ivor Callely is complaining of is of his own making.
No-one forced him to provide allegedly false mobile phone expenses and if it all serves to get rid of politicians who believe there is one rule for them and another for the rest of us and also ends the easy expenses culture in the public sector, well then I say it is a job well done.
Jet setting Minister Dempsey
Sticking with expenses journalist Ken Foxe of the Sunday Tribune has done the nation great service exposing the irregularities of the expenses system that has benefitted our elected representatives.
His latest target is Minister Noel Dempsey who used the Government jet to fly to the MacGill Summer School. Such an act cannot be justified. I genuinely believe if the punishment was that an offending politician who has wasted resources in such an ostentatious fashion was then forced to pay the bill from their own pocket that would put a stop to all these expensive capers.
But the latest revelation about Noel Dempsey is that he received cash payments as apparently a type of spending money to have when he was going on foreign trips. Is this fair?
A cash advance would be paid to the Minister and then he would spend the money on accommodation and “entertaining” and claim it back.
Now if a Government Minister is abroad and he buys a drink or a meal, “entertains”, someone our country is doing business with should that not be legitimately claimed as an expense?
Jetting to the MacGill talking shop at taxpayers’ expense is unforgivable but it is justifiable to pay some spending money in advance to a Minister going on a foreign trip if that money is then accounted for by receipts which must be submitted and recorded after the trip.
The next assignment for Ken Foxe must be to look at the state employees of RTE and examine their expenses.
For example, journalists talk a lot about balance and fairness. So why doesn’t Ken do a quick trawl on the last five RTE Washington Correspondents just to have a look at their expenses and what they claimed.
I have no doubt the journalists will be seen to be squeaky clean compared to the politicians they report on.
But wouldn’t it be nice to get that assurance and further wouldn’t it be nice to see journalists applying the same high standards to themselves as they expect of all others?
Tune in to Radio 1 from Monday.
Finally, just a bit of news regarding myself. This Monday, the 16th, and for three weeks, I am presenting from 9am to ten each morning on RTE Radio One.
Ryan Tubridy is off preparing for his new show that takes over from the late Gerry Ryan on 2FM. So I am the fill-in before John Murray takes to the airwaves with his new show on September 6th.
I think John is an inspired choice and hopefully will prove to be a winner for RTE in the mornings.
Along with being on Radio One each morning I am building up to my big quarter final clash as part of RTE television’s Celebrity Bainisteoir. That takes place on August 21st.
I can’t believe I am taking it so seriously. I am waking up each morning thinking about where I will play certain players. My team is Roche Emmets from County Louth and we are drawn against Kilconly of Galway, managed by the star of last year’s The Apprentice, Breffni Morgan.
I love football, any type of football. But my first love has always been Gaelic football. I just love the GAA, the parish club and its significance to community life in rural Ireland and now I am living it and loving it.
I will be broken hearted if we don’t win this big game Saturday week. Am I feeling the pressure? You bet I am. Before that hopefully you will be kind enough to listen out for me on Radio 1 from Monday. Talk to you then, bye for now.
Mark O’Loughlin’s HidBin story
What is the ugliest and most unsightly thing in your home?
You and your family use it every day and it’s a necessary evil that we all suffer.
Imagine making it disappear but it’s still there when needed.
The offending article is of course your wheelie bin and my new product, the hidbin, does exactly what the name suggests. See it on www.hidbin.ie ……From Unsightly to Unseen!
I brought my new invention onto the Dragon’s Den this week and explained how it banishes the blight of your wheelie bins. It went down amazingly well and I walked out a happy man with my investment.
My name is Mark O’Loughlin and the hidbin, as pictured here, camouflages a garden eyesore turning it into a nice, neat, natural looking hedge. It’s simply a synthetic hedge on a steel frame, complete with lid and doors and for only €99.95 (incl vat) you too can turn the unsightly into the unseen!
For those who didn’t catch the Dragon’s Den this week (I’m acutely aware that it clashed with both ‘Lost’ and the Masters Golf), I marched up the stairs, removed the black cloth revealing an early prototype of the hidbin.
Then I turned to face the Dragons and nearly had a heart attack. It’s a daunting challenge but my firm passion and belief in the hidbin solution carried me through the next 45 minutes or so of intense questioning.
Memorised 2 minute pitch over, there followed an unnerving and rather long silence which I wish someone had warned me about. Richard Curran’s voiceover summarised things nicely, ‘it’s a simple aesthetically sound solution to an everyday problem’. Once the questions started I was away in a hack.
Clearly all the Dragons were enthusiastic. Niall O’Farrell, a bit of a design guru himself, said ‘it’s great and is definitely gonna work. ’ His constructive criticism has since contributed to perfecting the new and improved hidbin design. Even Sarah Newman exclaimed it was a pretty neat idea. She bowed out, however, on the grounds that some people can’t even afford their bin charges these days. My polite retort, sadly edited out, was that since the property crash the focus of people’s spending is very much on home improvement. Besides, with 27 million homes in the UK alone, the potential export market for hidbin is huge. 7 million of these are terraced houses, (we have 300,000 in Ireland) many of whom are forced to keep their bins out front by necessity. The hidbin gives all of us the convenience of keeping our bins out of sight and in whatever location suits best.
Nowadays most of us are lumbered with 2 or even 3 large wheelie bins. One hidbin unit comfortably covers a standard 240litre bin – 2 units together hides up to 3 bins as illustrated {on the right}.
Bobby Kerr loved the idea too but was worried I wouldn’t dedicate sufficient time and energy to the promotion of hidbin given my other successful business. Balderdash ! My retort, also not aired, was to point out that I certainly wasn’t the only person in that room with more than one business and it did not seem to have hampered their success. For the record, I also run SanctuarySynthetics.ie, – Ireland’s specialists in supplying and installing artificial child and pet friendly garden grass for the domestic and childcare market.
It was a rollercoaster experience. At one point I thought that they’d all want a stake. As Richard Curran said ‘there was a lot of love in the room for the big man from Kildare’. In the end I was delighted to team up with Gavin Duffy and am honoured to have such a respected mentor on board to help launch and establish the hidbin as a household brand.
Now for the blatant plug – we appreciate that this is a product people will want to see, touch and feel. Thus we are exhibiting at the Spring Ideal Home & Garden Show in the RDS next weekend where the hidbin will be displayed in a garden context. Along side will be 2 other successful Dragon’s Den entrepreneurs, Noelle O Connor with Tanorganics ( remember the girl in the bikini that Sarah Newman sent away halfway through the pitch ) and Herbie Porsche with his toilet pipe cover ( the guy wanted ‘money for Herbie’ ) – the Dragon’s Den dream team! You can also come to investigate and buy your very own hidbin at Bloom in the Phoenix Park on the June Bank Holiday weekend.
Last week in this column Kate Carmody of Beal Organic Cheese made a very cogent argument about Ireland inc and how we should maximise our resources, whether they be the natural grassland of the Golden Vale or our innate passion, innovation and ingenuity to create value added products which we can trade and export. Well done to both RTE and the Sunday Independent for giving the hidbin and other great ideas the invaluable oxygen of publicity, particularly given all time low national morale.
Finally, a sincere thanks to all my family and friends for their support and belief in my enterprise. Demand since the show has been hugely gratifying. By the way, the hidbin doesn’t just cunningly disguise your bins, a less obvious use can be seen by searching for hidbin on YouTube!
For more information call us on 045 579100 or visit www.hidbin.ie
Article in today’s Sunday Indepedent.
I don’t know about you but as a business person I get really frustrated with all the negative media coverage of our economic crisis. Of course it has to be reported but over and over? I question that. Anyway I wrote this article. It has nothing to do with Dragons’ Den but I hope it might give you some food for thought. Apologies to the many international followers I have here on the blog as this is very much about our Irish Poliutical system.
Our nation faces its gravest, darkest crisis. Our banking system has collapsed. It is on a life support system of unsustainable national borrowings. When the banking system collapses that means the Political Establishment itself, the First Estate, has failed. The very proof of that is, not only have we lost confidence in Brian Cowen, but we appear to have little faith in an alternative Fine Gael and Labour Government lead by Enda Kenny. The Irish People have just lost all faith in the Political Establishment. The First Estate is now a bigger zombie than all the combined zombie banks it is propping up with our money.
The second Estate – and in Ireland that means, the Catholic Hierarchy – “has lost (all) credibility”. The degree of credibility lost depends on which Archbishop you are listening to, Dublin or Canterbury. So we can’t look there for moral leadership in our valley of tears.
The Third Estate, the Judiciary, fails us because the wheels of Justice move ever so slowly. We, the people, clamour for Justice to be seen to be done in regard to those who are deemed responsible for bankrupting our nation.
So the country is in effect being run by the Fourth Estate, the Media. “It is very bad and wrong and demoralising. We are dominated by Journalism.” This statement equally applies today to our national crisis as when Oscar Wilde said it in 1891. The very phrase, the Fourth Estate, was coined by another Irish man, Edmund Burke in 1787. Of course Burke was referring to the four elements of British Parliament, the Lords Spiritual, Temporal, the Commons and the Fourth Estate, the Press Gallery.
When the Political Establishment totally fails, the default option is real power transfers to the Media. This is not always a bad thing and sometimes in history was necessary. The very soul of the United States of America was saved by the Fourth Estate when Woodward and Bernstein exposed the corruption of Nixon leading to his resignation in 1974.
Good Friday’s Late Late Show featured “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, journalists, Matt Cooper, Kevin Myers, Sarah Carey and Ger Colleran. They told us yet again, as the media does on an hourly basis, the country is financially and morally bankrupt and endemically and incurably corrupt. Fitting for a Good Friday they crucified any hope or prospect of a resurrection for our little nation.
Most depressing was you could not actually argue with one word that was said. But how often do we have to hear this? This caused even the mild mannered Ryan Tubridy to ask his audience, “why don’t we take to the streets and protest?” No one asked Ryan, “to achieve what?”
The problem with the Fourth Estate calling the shots is journalists are first and foremost reporters. They report brilliantly on what has happened but the nature of their work means it is always a look back rather than a look forward. It is not in their DNA to tell us how to get out of the hole.
It is their job to compete with one another telling you how awful the hole is. And they see their job primarily as finding out who is responsible for creating the hole. So who dug it? Did they have planning permission? Where was the Regulator for holes? Was the hole planned in the Galway tent? Who ignored the signs warning us to avoid the hole? Was the contract for the warning signs awarded to the Minister’s brother-in-law? And a whole raft of FOIs about the hole.
Eventually as they all race to the bottom of the hole, one will break rank and call for those who supplied the shovels to dig the hole to be taken out and shot. The defence, I was only reporting what the people think anyway. The question is never asked could the people be thinking like that because for two years they’ve been told nothing else other than they have no future and the country is doomed?
The media also peddles the propaganda it was obvious the hole was there. It is frequently claimed that George Lee forewarned us. Well not loud and clear enough for his employers, RTE, who seemed more than a bit surprised and badly caught out with the very large €85 million hole that appeared in their advertising revenue last year.
Now you may have a pain in your own, you know what, listening, watching and reading all of the reports of what a hellhole it is. But one fact remains, we owe it to ourselves and to our children, whose future we are mortgaging by about €70m per day, to climb our way, as a nation, out of this hole.
If we are to really pull ourselves out of the hole, we have to wrestle control back from the Fourth Estate, the Media and put the First Estate, the people, back in control. The answer – a Grand Coalition. This occurs when a National Crisis is so serious it dictates that the two largest Political Parties form the Government. In history, at least fifteen countries in their darkest hours have seen their Politicians not just talk about putting the country first but actually do that and enter Government with their sworn enemies. In Germany, Canada, India, the Nederlands, Austria, too many to mention, it has achieved spectacular results.
This Government is on its last legs, it may fall any moment or may waddle, as a lame duck, for the rest of this year. But there will be a General Election in 2011. We need to debate now the issue of a Grand Coalition. Surely, faced with our Nation’s greatest crisis, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail should work together. The international support there would be for a solid Grand Coalition would knock at least half a per cent off our debt interest charge. That factor alone makes it worthy of the most serious consideration.
The Grand Coalition taking office in 2011 with a Five Year Programme could complete the job of doing all the heavy lifting for putting our country to right by 2016, a fitting way to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Here before us, after almost 100 years, we have the perfect opportunity to once and for all bury civil war politics in the interest of the people.
But why would Fine Gael make such a generous offer to its old enemy Fianna Fail? Because it would not be the “old” Fianna Fail. In 2011 it would be the new Fianna Fail, bruised, battered and beaten having suffered the wrath of the electorate at the ballot box. It would be the ethnically, electorally cleansed Fianna Fail. But it will still be a party of at least 55 TDs.
So here are the alternatives to a Grand Coalition:
The Expected Result – A Fine Gael and Labour Coalition. Do we really believe with massive economic issues to be resolved that such a coalition of compromises is the best option? If anything Fine Gael and Labour have grown further apart ideologically in the last two years.
The Not To Be Unexpected Result – A Hung Dail or a Minority Government, meaning further, deepening crisis.
The Unexpected Result – A series of elections and Fianna Fail back in power with the aid of Labour, Sinn Fein, The Greens and/or the army of Independents that will get elected in 2011 and any subsequent re-runs of that election.
But what if the Fourth Estate, the Media, has got it wrong and Enda Kenny is actually a real leader? Could he be the Taoiseach at the head of an historical and truly dynamic, progressive and successful Grand Coalition? Of course there will be Politicians and Hacks who will say that it will never work as they did about Paisley and McGuinness. But for our Island nation there is within our grasp the prospect of marking the 1916 centenary with Sinn Fein and the DUP in Government in the North working peacefully and Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in Government in the South working productively.
Even his detractors say Kenny is decisive and thinks outside the box. He won’t welcome it but he certainly won’t rule out the prospect of a Grand Coalition because it creates a real headache for Fianna Fail. If they say “no way” it means they are being small minded in the face of such a big crisis causing the loss of even more seats. If they publicly consider it they are accepting Fine Gael as an equal. So expect silence but deep down both parties know if they could stop digging in the past they could actually start building the future.
For Fianna Fail, ever the pragmatists, there is the prize of establishing itself as the one real party of Government. It would see them actually putting the country first and preparing the ground to be in with a fighting chance to win the subsequent election and be in power for the centenary of the birth of our Nation in 2021.
If Padraig Pearse, James Connolly et al died to give us self determination by the people, the majority of the people probably now want the biggest ever Irish solution to the biggest ever Irish problem – A Grand Coalition.