Even glitter lipstick can’t add any sparkle to this dismal Dragons’ Den
NEVER trust a man whose initials are embroidered on his shirt cuffs. Car salesman or politician, he’ll be a smarmy egomaniac who uses his own name whenever he talks about himself.
Sure enough, the letters ‘TS’ are embossed on the starched turn-ups of Touker Suleyman’s shirtsleeves. Does he have this done, like getting his mum to sew a nametag inside his shirt collar, in case his co-star Peter Jones is tempted to steal his clothes in the dressing-room at Dragons’ Den (BBC2)?
Or is it because the sight of his monogram brings a little rush of self-regard every time he checks his watch?
The Turkish Cypriot businessman certainly likes to refer to himself in the third person. He boasts about giving ‘Touker time’ to the lucky recipients of his largesse — this probably means that entrepreneurs who accept investment from Suleyman have to listen to him banging on endlessly about himself.
He might like the sound of his own name, but he likes his money more, and he kept his wallet clammed shut during one of the flimsiest parades of shoddy prototypes and pitches the show has seen in all its 14 series. Most of the business plans contained more holes than the Olympic Rings.
Few of the entrepreneurs pleading for cash could give a convincing reply to the question, ‘Who would want your product?’ Jones supplied the answer for one business that made glittery lipstick, by painting it around his own mouth. His face looked like a dumpling with a glacé cherry in it.
He loved the look, pursing his lips and pouting for the camera. That’s who will buy sparkly lip gloss — men with a flamboyant streak, on a night out wearing 6in heels. No woman would risk it, in case she looked like a male cross-dresser.
In all its years, Dragons’ Den has had only one headline success: Reggae Reggae Sauce. It seems every week there’s a chancer trying to flog spicy dressings on the show; this time it was a man called Faheem.
Faheem didn’t appear sure whether he expected the Dragons to invest in his condiments, his restaurant or his franchise brand. The only thing clear was that he wanted their money. He seemed very keen on this, promising his house as equity to Deborah Meaden if she failed to double her outlay.
Desperation rarely breeds confidence, especially from a man who’s perspiring like cheese in a sauna. As Faheem’s pitch slithered into oblivion, he squeaked: ‘Save me!’ But no one did.
However pointless some of these start-ups seem, they couldn’t compete with presenter Evan Davis. What is he doing there? He doesn’t meet the candidates, he doesn’t interview the Dragons: he adds nothing, except a wittering voiceover crammed with schoolboy puns.
When one chap tried to sell a silicone tap for water bottles, Deborah Meaden ‘poured cold water on the project’, said Evan with a snicker, and Sarah Willingham ‘washed her hands of it’. Nick Jenkins’s doubts about the glitter lipstick ‘took the sparkle off proceedings’. Go back to Newsnight, Evan.
Laboured puns were a blight that left Monkeys Make You Laugh Out Loud (C5) almost unwatchable. Narrator Iain Lee, sounding like a cutprice Jonathan Ross, couldn’t have scraped the barrel harder for jokes about ‘gorilla warfare’ and ‘first chimpressions’.
And to pad out this collection of clips swiped from the internet, three stand-up comedians provided a sarcastic commentary.
Some snatches of footage, captured on phone cameras, were sweet and funny. If they’d been shown with just a musical soundtrack, this show might have been soppily entertaining — the young orangutan who fell over laughing at a magic trick was adorable.
Another orang, who scooped a half-drowned bird out of a pond with a leaf and laid it gently on the grass to dry, showed extraordinary, human-like qualities: compassion, and ingenious tool use.
But all comedienne Sarah Someone-or-Other could offer was a bitter, unfunny comment that the ape probably ate the bird afterwards. Monkeys might make us laugh out loud, but the idiots on this show certainly didn’t.