Page 339 - James Caan - The Real Deal

33 · Into the Den

‘Do you ever watch it?’ she asked.
‘I’ve seen it a couple of times, but I don’t get a lot of time to
watch TV.’
‘Well, when they looked at the footage I filmed they thought you
might have something that could work in the Den and they’d like
to meet you.’
I’d always enjoyed the Dragons’ Den format when I got to see
it, as watching budding entrepreneurs pitch their business idea to
established entrepreneurs for investment is a very condensed
version of what I do for a living. If I was at home when it was on
I would usually watch it.
I went to BBC Television Centre where one of the show’s
producers had arranged for me to hear the pitches of three
entrepreneurs while they filmed me. They wanted to see how I
interacted with the pitchers and how I assessed the investment
opportunities as a kind of screen test. As I spend every day
assessing investment opportunities, I found asking questions very
straightforward, even though there were several cameras in the
room.
The producer called me up a couple of weeks later and asked if
I’d like to view the tape with him. Well, of course I was curious,
so I went to meet him again. By this time, several people in the
BBC had seen the tape and apparently they were all quite excited
about it.
‘They can’t believe you haven’t done this before. You’re a
natural!’
When he showed it to me, I was quite surprised myself: I seemed
reasonably relaxed, and I thought I’d asked some pretty good
questions. All of a sudden the idea of going on TV wasn’t just
plausible, it was actually quite appealing.
‘Would you be interested in joining the show?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure. I think so. Do you think I would fit it in?’
‘Well, I think the next step would be to get you and a couple of

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