I can’t watch Dragons’ Den anymore. The format is still pretty much a winner, but the panelists have become so self-important and now seem far too powerful for their own good. Yes, they’re all multi-national business men and women and heads of powerful corporations, so the argument would be they have every right to be self-important. But suddenly they all want to be TV stars (see Peter Jones’s forthcoming ITV series, Tycoon). But now one of them has got the chop, proving the no one is bigger than The Den itself.

Richard Farleigh, perhaps the most reasoned of the lot but slightly on the smarmy side, has been given the push, according to The Daily Mail. It reports that the Beeb is looking for a Dragon from an ethnic minority. Of course the Beeb denies this and says that a new Dragon will be chosen on business credentials alone, and please bear in mind that this is the The Daily Mail talking here…