Can Dragons’ Den star’s pal turn Middleton firm around?

The Duchess of Cambridge’s brother James Middleton is trying to put the oomph into Boomf and has hired a new chief executive officer to transform his marshmallow company’s fortunes.

On January 1 Sophie Dummer was quietly appointed in the role. Sophie, 40, was previously a commercial director of the personalised greeting card company Moonpig, whose founder Nick Jenkins is one of the stars of Dragons’ Den.

Intriguingly, Jenkins is a major investor in Boomf.

In November, I revealed that James’s future brotherin-law, hedge fund manager James Matthews, had spent £100,000 bailing out Boomf, ahead of presenting Pippa Middleton with a £250,000 art deco-style sparkler in the Lake District in July.

Pippa’s beau’s investment in Boomf, which prints Instagram pictures on marshmallows and sells boxes of nine ‘magical’ sweets for £15, was part of a fundraising round. In October, it emerged the confectionary company lost almost £1 million last year and increased its bank debt by taking out a £500,000 loan with Barclays. Boomf’s new CeO Dummer is used to choppy waters as she was a crew member on the Qingdao Yacht which took part in the Clipper Round The World race. Middleton started his first venture, the now-defunct Cake Kit Company, with an £11,000 loan from his uncle Gary Goldsmith, who was caught in a cocaine and vice sting two years later. Perhaps James is hoping that the Moonpig magic will rub off on him. he founded Boomf in 2013 and named it ‘ after the noise a marshmallow makes when it falls through your letterbox’. It took Jenkins five years of losses and four rounds of fundraising before his Moongpig website, founded in 2000, eventually made a profit. he sold it to Photobox.com for £120 million in 2011. Mr Middleton can but dream . . .