Deb’s got a handle on it
THERE’S a chap on tonight’s DRAGONS’ DEN (BBC1, 8pm) who manages to get Deborah Meaden’s name wrong. Admittedly, not “wrong” 100 per cent – I don’t mean he messes up entirely and calls her, say, Dolly Parton – but wrong enough to address her as “Debbie”.Which isn’t great.
“Debbie, would you like to have a go?” he asks, keen to get her and her fellow Dragons excited by this product he’s brought to the Den. It’s an exercise bike accessory designed to make indoor cycling feel more like the sort where you actually get somewhere, and “Debbie” is the first of the Dragons he’s inviting to try it out.
To Deborah’s credit, she doesn’t pick him up on his faux-pas. Doesn’t even flinch, in fact.
Instead, she just politely turns down the chance he’s offered her, to hop onto the bike he’s wheeled in, set up on one of these authenticity enhancing rocker boards he makes. “Probably not,” Deborah replies, pointing out to him that her left arm, in case he hadn’t noticed, is heavily encased in plaster.
I suppose, to be fair to this fellow – who’s seeking an £80,000 investment in the company he’s set up to make these things – he may be more nervous than he looks.
Or he may have mistaken Deborah Meaden for Debbie McGee. I’m sure that happens all the time. (Also quite confusing at times, I’m sure, is the fact that Peter Jones is the same height as Peter Crouch.)
Anyway, no harm done.All five Dragons, Deborah included, are still potential investors here.And fortunately this guy doesn’t repeat his embarrassing mistake by calling Deborah “Debbie” the next time he addresses her.
Not that he calls her Deborah either. “Did you just call me ‘Deb’?!” she exclaims. “You started off with Debbie and you got away with it once. Now you’ve shortened it to ‘Deb’.”
She’s clearly worried this could get even worse.“If you call me ‘D’…” she warns him.
Later on, instead of addressing Sara Davies as Sara, to rhyme with Cara, he calls her Sarah, to rhyme with “carer”.
Straight after that, in THE
(BBC1, 9pm), the nine remaining ninnies are summoned to east London to be given their latest instructions. Lord Sugarplum himself arrives in a car with no driver. Has he gone and fired his chauffeur now as well? Apparently not.
He’s simply setting the tone for this week’s task.
“I want you to design your own driverless vehicle,” Lord Sugarplum tells the twits.
Is he out of his mind?
“I don’t have the knowledge in regards to the technical part,” admits one candidate who’s keen to project-manage this one, “but I designed my own bar…”