Enter the Dragon's Den!

In June 2004 I received a phone call from a guy who works for BBC TV in Manchester. He asked about Ultra and whether I'd ever seen the Dragons' Den program. I hadn't, but I was curious. I should mention that I emigrated to Canada in 1982 (from good old Wigan), so was out of touch with what was on the telly, so to speak.

I was invited to meet with the producers of the show in Manchester, where they gave me some indication of what the show was all about. My thoughts were that the show was something along the lines of Tomorrow's World, a showcase of new ideas, etc (little did I know).

Whilst at the Manchester studio we did a video-taped talk through of what Ultra was all about, the reason I started work on the project, the research I'd done and the beneficial results of shaving with Ultra.

The tape was shipped off to London and reviewed along with over 4,000 other people who had applied to be on the show. It seems that Ultra was novel enough (and the inventor peculiar enough) to catch their attention.

A couple of weeks later I was asked to attend (at 7.45am) an address in the East End of London. When I arrived the place looked more mafia than BBC - that alone should have given me a warning of what was to come!

Forewarned is forearmed

I was ushered into a tiny room where around 10-12 other hopefuls were assembled, most of them nervously pacing about practicing their presentations, I was a bit concerned as I hadn't got one!

These folks had the advantage over me in that at least they had seen the show before, and had a good idea that it might well be confrontational.

After about an hour in the "sweat it out room" my name was called, and I was led to the make up room. My first instinct was to flee the place, what would my mates in Wigan say if they saw me wearing lipstick and the like!

Thankfully the make-up artist said I had "enough colour" to look fine on camera without any make-up but, I'll put that colour down to my panic of seeing a bloke holding a selection of lipsticks and the like.

From there I was taken by the producer to the "holding area", a walk that had some feeling that a prisoner and a priest might take, just before the floorboards go from under one of them.

The Yoropen Collection

The most ergonomically designed pens and pencils available. More info