She claims to be ‘rubbish’ at entertainment but her no-nonsense approach has made her a mainstay of one of Britain’s most popular TV shows. Now, in a new BBC radio series, the businesswoman is taking business to task on the climate
As Deborah Meaden gears up for her 17th series of Dragons’ Den, which she joined in 2006, she meets me at the Guardian’s offices. She is maybe 90 seconds late and does this lightning three-act apology – that she is sorry; why it happened (taxi driver didn’t know the way); how we could move on (he was actually a very nice guy) – which transmitted, in a tiny but meaningful way, what she always puts across on screen. Here is a woman who will sort things, who will take responsibility, who means what she says, who will not overreact, who doesn’t make the same mistake twice.
Since she joined Twitter in 2011, and ever more so since Brexit, Meaden has added common sense and trenchancy to traits visible in her public persona. She always came across, in the Den, as having a rich bass note of kindness and generosity. All the guys are so hard-charging and alpha, full of phrases like “I don’t see what’s in it for me”, offering half the investment asked for, for five times the stake. Meaden has always stood out – I mean, she’s not running a charity, as the business people like to say, but she doesn’t go in bristling with ego, looking for the win at every turn, and this seems to play well for her decision process since all but a handful of her businesses are still active (If you ever have a slow moment, you can go through the episodes to see which investor has the best hit rate. It’s quite fun, like the end-of-the-year roundup of the racing tips from Radio 4’s Today programme.)
