BBC Two
We begin tonight’s Dragons’ Den with a character created by Limmy calling himself Brian O’Reilly. This spectacularly jittery jock is mostly worried about energy expenditure and he’s certainly expending a lot of nervous energy here. To curtail such careless waste he has invented the Energy EGG, essentially like the PedEgg™ but with fewer foot scrapings and the ability to automatically switch lights on and off as you enter and leave a room. It’s in John Lewis (great) but it’s not selling all that much (not great). His company is currently sitting on a £120,000 loss and O’Really confesses that he runs out of money in four months. Cutthroat Jock McSlasher tells him that he’s in a lot of trouble in what is far from his first death threat of the series.
Jock McSlasher tells him that he’s in a lot of trouble in what is far from his first death threat of the series.
Nonetheless there’s an app in development that cloud computing boy Pies likes. But things start to get nasty when Devourer Medung gets cranky with Pies for interrupting her and making the same point much like the invisible woman from the Fast Show and she takes it out on O’Really by pulling out in a huff. Then Peeturd is out in a minute and a huff ¹. Pies offers him the £50,000 but for 30% which may must carve out of the existing investors’ share. O’Really agrees to this and prepares his kneepads because he’s going to be sucking investor cock for a very long time.
Next up is Erika Brodnock and her range of dolls and computurd game/app Karisma Kidz which encourages children to talk about their feelings to improve their self-esteem (already: terrible idea). Erika developed bipolar disorder after the birth of her fifth child, went all anti-psychiatry which worked for her and has since trained in a range of made-up bullshit crank disciplines like NLP and matrix re-imprinting which is exactly the kind of hippy drivel you would expect Smelly Ploppen to be impressed by.
And yet the Big Brother style monitoring of children’s moods through the app bothers Smelly and the lack of face-to-face interaction with children bothers Devourer who likes to terrify infants on a one-to-one basis. While Erika may be a personally impressive individual Peeturd sees it as a social enterprise rather than a business one and she’s politely shown the exit.
We move along from trained hippy to trained killer. Former Royal Marine commando Simon Weatherall is pitching his GlowFaster range of exercise clothing that features a thin fluorescent lighting strip around whatever you’re wearing that stops you being killed when you’re running in the dark and gives biofeedback to a mobile app. He talks like ex-military, barking things at you like you’re a moron. But talking perpetually in CAPS LOCK doesn’t impress the Dragons who aren’t convinced that Blowfaster is a significant improvement on the fluorescent clothing and exercise apps already on the market. One by one they fall.
But talking perpetually in CAPS LOCK doesn’t impress the Dragons who aren’t convinced by Blowfaster
Simon thanks them all heartily snarling “ENJOY THOSE JACKETS!” with the confidence of a man who could snap the neck of everyone on the panel in 10 seconds flat and survive in a storm drain like Raoul Moat, evading capture for years afterwards. The Dragons make a note to up their personal security as Simon smashes through a window and abseils to ground level.
The Dragons make a note to up their personal security as Simon smashes through a window and abseils to ground level.
We finish with Jock McSlasher ponying up £60,000 for 35% of a company offering a range of kids’ suitcases. Jo Kerley, designer and director of JK WorldWide is so happy she could shite. If she does, it’s off-camera and we cut to Evan Davis which is scarcely an improvement.
The verdict: I’m just a sucker with no self-esteem.
Marks out of 10: 7.5
¹ Apologies to Groucho Marx.