Dragon breathes new fire
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RACHEL Elnaugh, the original female panellist in the hit BBC2 series, Dragons’ Den, had it all – a successful company, vast wealth and a loving family – until her business bombed and former employees started dishing the dirt.
The 43-year-old businesswoman, whose “gift experience” company, Red Letter Days, spectacularly crashed in 2005 before being bought out by fellow Dragons Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis, is in a much happier place today, having moved to a country pile in Bakewell, in the Peak District, where she lives with her second husband, Yorkshireman Chris Little, and five sons.
She now acts as a consultant, mentoring small firms and giving motivational talks nationwide. She has also just written Business Nightmares, which features her own rise and fall, along with the professional crisis points of other entrepreneurs including Jeffrey Archer, Gerald Ratner and Donald Trump.
She wouldn’t return to Dragons’ Den because she hasn’t the capital to invest – and, in any case, the show is more about entertainment than helping budding entrepreneurs, she says.
“It has become coliseum TV where you just go on the show and you’re humiliated. It should be about supporting people as opposed to supporting the egos of the Dragons. The first series was great as the egos hadn’t inflated at that point. Only about halfway through filming we realised it was going to be big.
“When we started filming series two, everyone’s teeth were whitened and they were looking shiny and polished and thinking of the nastiest Simon Cowell-type comments they could. To get your share of airtime as a Dragon, you had to be the one with the put-down.”
While Rachel may not have agreed with their intimidating methods, she admits she was grateful when the two fellow Dragons bought out Red Letter Days, which had been in trouble for several years.
“When the end finally came and I finally let go, it was hugely liberating. I thought, ‘Thank God that’s over’. In life, sometimes you just don’t want to let go. It’s like when a relationship isn’t working but you are desperately clinging to it. There comes a day when you say, ‘Enough’. Then when you get rid of the negative thing in your life that’s causing you all that grief and pain, the weight is lifted off you. I got my life back.”
The Red Letter Days crash has left her much more wary of people, she admits, after former colleagues dished the dirt on her to certain newspapers, painting her as a bitch and a harridan who didn’t care about anyone but herself.
“I did feel betrayed by some of the people who spoke to the press. When you are rich and powerful and are surrounded by lots of people who are friendly and invite you to their events, you think it’s because they like you. But actually they only want your business. I could become quite cynical.”
She believes that society is changing its views on what’s important in life.
“There’s a real move away from materialism towards a need for meaning, sense and order, and a huge need for wellbeing. I don’t think that people, ultimately, will be interested in the whole materialism thing, which has not brought people happiness. Time is our most valuable commodity. I lost Red Letter Days and the salary, but I got my life back.”
Business Nightmares, by Rachel Elnaugh, is published by Crimson, priced £17.99
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