I managed to find half an hour to watch the latest episode of Dragon’s Den last night and as usual I was struck by how fierce those dragons can be.

Ok, so they are offering to risk their hard-earned cash and precious time on unproven business ventures. And granted, some of the participants really don’t deserve the money anyway. But the dragons are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they are looking for a great business venture to invest in.

Despite this, the person who has just spent the best part of 5 years and all their spare cash developing their ideas is forced to part with a large chunk of the shares for a comparably small sum, just because the dragons are connected and experienced enough to click their fingers and get the business off the ground.

Yes I know that life is unfair. And business is business and if the participants would only improve their negotiation skills, they would probably get a much better deal. But I am still wondering whether I should have said yes to the invitation to go on the Dragon’s Den when they called me up last year, because I really would love to remind Duncan Bannatyne’s ego that when he was my age, he owned an ice cream van.