Can't buy me love

What is occurring with Peter Jones, has his precariously balanced noggin finally succumbed to altitude sickness after sitting atop Mount Jones for 43 years? Now that I regularly see him lumber around a computer generated supermarket where the shelves are filled with pound signs and interest rates, I fear he may have. Why has he sold his gold-plated soul down the river of advertising like this?

Honestly, it’s not like he’s Phil Tufnell who, upon being crowned ‘King of the Jungle’ on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ (“appee daze”) became more closely linked with debt consolidation adverts than Carol Vorderman. This upset me greatly at the time because it was such a transparently cheap technique used by the companies to hook poor, debt-riddled sheep into eternal buggeration. After all, Carol Vorderman is good at sums so she wouldn’t give loan advice if it wouldn’t definitely be right for me would she. But then she was sidelined when a boozy cricketer won a reality show and was beloved by (an often fickle) public for minutes at a time. Out of the jungle he came, onto every available advert he went, then back off into obscurity he fucked. Having more than a touch of the ol’ apples an’ pears about him, he was trusted by the sofabound bewildered who were all too glad to take his advice and sign up to a loan that meant 10,000 easier monthly payments instead of 26 slightly-tricky-but-doable ones. After all, honest cockerney Phil wouldn’t lie to us. It’s not like he’s being paid to say these things, he honestly believes them. Look, he’s giving us the two thumbs up, just like he did in the jungle. He’s great, I must remember to buy his autobiography.

And now Peter Jones is pretending to go shopping for logos in his local Moneysupermarket. Bad times.

I don’t really like seeing any of the various Dragons from ‘Dragon’s Den’ (shouldn’t that be lair?) away from each other. It just feels like they come as a set, a collective. It’s like seeing Ant without Dec, Piers Morgan doing an outside broadcast without someone yelling “wanker” behind him, or a new U2 album without a pervading air of disappointment. Each comes with the other.

In case you have forgotten, ‘Dragon’s Den’ is the show where a handful of super-rich suits sit next to piles of fake cash in the upper level of a deserted warehouse (the ‘Den’) and have a succession of people trudge up the stairs to pitch business ideas; products or services in the hope that the super-rich ‘Dragons’ will be willing to invest their cash and expertise. Aside from Peter Jones, who is big in communications as well as being tall enough to graffiti light aircraft, the other Dragons are as follows:

Theo Paphitis, master of the ‘hilarious’ conclusion-bite (as yet unused examples to watch out for including: “This product is like a chocolate teapot: Brown. I’m out.” and “This business is like a freshly-castrated aroused male nudist: bloody pointless. I’m out.”). Theo also regularly peppers his comments with references to his family, specifically his wife: the coincidentally named ‘Mrs P’. These references are (like his conclusion-bites) invariably bizarre as they always accuse the pitcher of trying to vindictively steal his family's inheritance rather than simply achieve a modestly successful life for themselves. Most of Theo’s money comes from ladies’ underwear, which is presumably why his wife has such an amusing walk.

Deborah Meadon, who resembles a heavy smoking viper, but whom I’m not ashamed to say I actually quite like. Not in an attracted-to way of course, more in a she-would-be-the-best-PA-ever sort of way. She’s the sort of person who should be kept in a glass case with ‘In case of emergency, break glass’ emblazoned upon it in large intimidating letters. You would wheel her into all your staff meetings for use whenever you started to feel the message slip from your presentational grasp. I don’t think she’s necessarily the richest Dragon, but she is most certainly the scariest. I imagine her husband making love to her, giving her all his best moves at the best angles only for her to mutter “I’m out” and pull a face like a lemon sucking a lime.

Duncan Bannatyne, who until Peter Jones loomed into every available commercial break, was looking to be the most ubiquitous Dragon as he went through a stage where he seemed to appear on everything from Strictly Come Dancing to Ross Kemp’s Gangs, via Paul O’Grady, possibly to distance himself from the image of ‘dour Scot’ that he seemed to have been tarnished with. This didn’t quite go to plan as he is incredibly dour, and also, he is a Scot. This is possibly why he retreated back to the Den to continue matching his hair colour with every dining table in Harrods (he’s currently on mahogany), leaving the door open for Mr Jones to become an advertising Gulliver on Lilliputian telly.

And finally, James Caan, who sits with his shirt unbuttoned to his naval, thrusting his balls at the pitchers like an Arab Sheikh. You expect him to forget the cameras are rolling and to suddenly lurch forwards spitting “’ow much for dee woman?!” at any moment.I don’t know what his money is in, but I suspect he hands it over by playing a pungi and letting it dance into the recipients’ pockets.

If you haven’t seen it, you should give it a go. It’s really quite good, assuming you don’t get too hung up on presenter Evan Davis’ wonky eye.

Incidentally, one of the pitchers was once someone I (vaguely) know. I can’t remember what it was he was pitching, only that it looked like it had once been an integral part of a tumble drier, and it didn’t work no matter how hard he tapped it and gave it encouraging looks. He arrived being described as ‘serial inventor’, and left being described as ‘unsuccessful’. Shame he couldn’t have invented a tambourine.





(I love all the Dragons. Please don’t sue me. Thanks.)