[Four dragons sit smugly in their pimped-up warehouse, reflecting on the recent tragedy which has befallen Deborah Meaden. She remains in intensive care after asking to see a demonstration of a product claiming to reduce knife crime in Britain. A sawn-off shotgun. Peter Jones invested heavily.]

[The first “hopeful” is a 92-year old lady. During the time it takes her to climb the stairs, the men express their heartfelt concern for Deborah’s condition, and calculate how they will strip and divide up her assets if she doesn’t pull through. The old lady’s pitch takes about an hour and a half – all that space they’ve got up there… but no toilets, not even one of those Thora Hird indoor ski-lift contraptions – on reaching the top step for the third time, she may have uttered the words “entrepreneurs, my arse” from under her inhaler.]

DUNCAN: Let me get this straight, you want fifty quid for your entire business. How big are the overheads for hand-knitted tea-cosies?

OLD LADY: Well, the last spinning jenny I bought cost five pounds and six shillings. Plus I’ll probably need some healthy new sheep.

PETER: [annoying smirk] Can you still catch footrot from crockery-oriented knitwear?

OLD LADY: Pardon? Is there anything I've forgotten?

DUNCAN: How about dyeing?

OLD LADY: Would that improve my presentation? I’m the average age for my village.

[Suddenly what seemed an attractive inheritance has the dragons back-pedalling… but she knows how to appeal to a canny Scots entrepreneur… ]

OLD LADY: I’ve accumulated 25 Chinese children in my coal house, who’ll work for an Eccles cake a day. Between them.

DUNCAN: I’m in! [Fires a £50-note paper aeroplane in her direction before anyone else can speak. No need to discuss the tempting offshoot of Egg-Cosies ‘R’ Us.]

[The next arrivals are a couple who’ve designed and manufactured an ocean-going canoe from Alka Seltzer, for untraceable insurance ventures. It comes with an inflatable undersea bunker and General Noriega's Rough Guide to Investment Banking in Panama (sadly now out of print). The only problem is the patent, pending their psychiatric examination.]

[There then follows a priest, who seems irritated by a tag around his ankle. The soft-spoken James Caan (once a warm-up act for Perry Como) shows interest.]

JAMES: So, Exorcism Dot Com is purely funded by your other company, Choirboy Express. You’re sure you won’t be needing any of the fifty grand to overturn the injunction and restraining orders?

PRIEST: [Checks his choirboy client database on laptop] How many other Justice Frigham-McClooshes are there likely to be in Leamington Spa?

[James Caan wanders off into the fascinating world of finance, “turnover”, “equity”, “pre-tax hedge fund, interest-deductible, capital gains projections, etc.”, as the camera goes into somnolent fuzzy and the sound yawns and fades. We wake up to find the priest has been replaced by a group of glamorous young ladies. Under any other circumstances, you would expect them to launch into a chorus of “Stop! In the Name of Love”, but their pitch has caused a certain amount of confusion in the mind of Theo Popacropolis.]

THEO: Is this a garden centre? Or a brothel? Or both?

LEAD “SINGER”: Depends how you prefer to take it, sir…. but I can assure you we always disinfect the leaf-blowing machine after use. What more do you want?

[The young lady’s stroppy attitude incenses Peter Jones, who reminds her just who she’s talking to.]

PETER: [glaring at her, but pointing to Theo] Excuse me, do you own an Olympic-size swimming pool in the shape of your genitalia? Are you chauffeured to breakfast every morning by an ex-Scandinavian call-girl who can squeeze fresh mango juice out of her fallopian tubes? Believe me, if you don’t curb your flippant remarks, madam, you’ll never progress from the world of nursery whorehouses.

[The young lady looks momentarily inspired and writes down “World of Nursery Whorehouses”. She needs something for the tax return, and they are, after all, based next to Land of Leather. Duncan nods approvingly.]

DUNCAN: Absolutely, Peter. [laughs] Gotta stand up to women more in the modern entrepreneurial climate. Too many namby-pamby men poncin' about these days, kowtowing to maternity leave, [the programme has just introduced mandatory pregancy testing] tiptoeing round the tampons [didn't Nick Lucas sing that?]... as my father used to say "show 'em a firm hand with a rod of iron..."

PETER: ... and a sawn-off shotgun! [round of deep-throated macho laughter]

[Sounds of an argument have broken out below. Mrs. Duncan has arrived, and we see a view of her pit-bull features looking up the stairs, being restrained by the bouncers.]

MRS. DUNCAN: Duncan! Yous comin’ home tonight for a change, pal! Y'tea’s ready, if you’re not doon here in five minutes I’ll rip y'wee balls off and feed ‘em through a cashpoint machine…

[Duncan sprints away, although not before leaving his business card with one of “the Supremes”. Later that day he will reflect on how lucky he was to have married a “real” dragon, particularly as the final contestant turned out to be the inventor of the "explosion-proof burqa".]