She's definitely an acquired taste.

I didn't like her when I first watched her interior design shows on QVC but once you 'get her' she becomes more watchable.

All imho of course

this is what balled this up for me, if you don't know your progression in the game, it's just basically a box of questions ..... a LITERAL LATERAL BOX OF QUESTIONS

if they added the board element to the game, then they would be interested ..... probably literally

I am beginning to feel that this show is now scraping the barrel. There were also annoyances in the last series, due to the set, now exacerbated by all the lift nonsense and now feel it is a programme I should record to enable me to FF>> through all the padding.

I'd have preferred the new Dragons to have been the two from the online version of the show. Bring back Julie "Uh-huh" Meyer!

Yes, Deborah sniped at him a couple of times. A right old dragon to the newbie. The two new dragons have not found their feet at all. Even so, I find them far Less irritating than the dreadful Hillary. Duncan is now just a farce.

I loved the idea of the pod. The chappie didn't present well, but all became understood when he said he didn't know his 'abc' until he was 20. Just shows that enterprise doesn't always follow education. Another one I wish well. I dont know why Peter Jones was concerned. He must have had the heart to have seen the need in the first place. Different to that dreadful beef jerky man who was so full of his own self importance; I dont know what he was doing on the Den in the first place. PR probably.

We've lost Theo...it would kill this show if we lost Duncan too. He's honest, humourous, direct and doesn't sugar the pill.

I agree. I cut about 10 minutes off the show with the dreary "lift" sequences

But I must admit I find something intriguing about Kelly Hoppen. Defo much better than Meaden the Witch.

Actually, a number of care homes are now using 'memory rooms' where they have lots of items from peoples' younger days. It doesn't have to be tailored to each individual, it can have things like old photos of the local city/town, tins of brasso, old soap wrappers, chocolate wrappers, magazines, common ornaments from that era etc. Anything that would be familiar to the people in their long term memories. It has been found to be beneficial to many dementia patients. They were doing this in my late mother's care home back in 2010 and it has been very successful.

I liked the idea of the pod and thought the chap who had come up with the idea had really used his initiative with it and had spotted a gap in the market.

Neil

Has anyone else noticed how Kelly looks at Duncan and how she laughs at his jokes? I sense some sexual tension there. She tries to portray herself as tough independent woman but deep inside feels sexually aroused by the bad-boy and cunning manners of Duncan.

Poor Piers was roasted not only by Deborah but also by Peter. "well, make an offer then?... chicken" right after Piers question the moral dilemma of Peter. He seems to just give generic textbook answers, not real personality, insight or outside-the-box thinking, it´s just all too one-dimensional. Kelly, I really like though.

Deborah seems to have a bit of a problem with Piers (the new guy)
"you either have to make an offer or go out' was clearly just trying to be patronising.

It seems dragons/entrepreneurs often have pretty poor general knowledge sometimes, e.g. not knowing Rocky/Penguin/Club were chocolate biscuits (I had never heard or seen a 'Taxi' though), Peter Jones' weak 'WWTBAM' argument about the board game when there are loads of tea time quiz shows that are not innovative (ignoring the issue with Only Connect being similar), Hillary Devet having poor general knowledge on million pound drop e.t.c.
It works against them sometimes I think

I have a relative with dementia but I did not really understand the idea of the 'pod'. I think my grandma would just get a bit confused/upset and keep asking why she was sitting in a strange room, but it probably depends on the person

I don't understand why a care home or NHS Trust would pay a company to put old furniture, TV, magazines etc in a space for a premium when they could do it easily themselves. As per usual the government and NHS spending money frivilously when they could be putting it into preventative medicines and research.

Thats what I thought- + where were the usual comments about how easily reproducible it was by anyone

Thank God someone saw what I did, thank you for restoring my sanity for a while at least. I watched it this morning on catch up and I was telling them no, no, no.
This isn't a business model, because as you say, any care home could go out and replicate it in half a day from shopping in house clearance shops. is the NHS really wasting money on him? Yes probably.
The fact that Duncan couldn't see it either should have been a clue. He having owned a chain of retirement/nursing homes.

I also found PJ rather disingenuous to say he felt guilty making a profit from it. Had he been presented with a super, duper bed for sick kids, would he have felt the same?

The one they missed and I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes as popular as the ride on luggage for children, was the Scooter mascot.
"So it's just a toy"?
What did they expect? A horse's head snorting flames from its nostrils and serrated spears protruding from the wheels? I'm living in a traffic free area where every young child has a scooter. I bet they'd love them.
The scooters are only outnumbered by cats. Now if someone finds a way to stop cats pooing on my lawn, I'll send some money myself !

Well they could spend time and money doing such things, but they outsource such services to companies who specialise in that. Just as they outsource things like cleaning, which equally could be done internally.

You say they are paying him a premium, but sourcing and purchasing these items would cost them money too. It might be easy to find a few things on ebay, but to provide large quantities would not be simple or easy at all. That's where the business's "premium" comes in. Also, they may well have to make reproduction items, it's highly unlikely too much has survived from that long ago..

Think you're being rather naïve as I can go and purchase this stuff tomorrow, in fact I might.

Total waste of money for something that has no proven long term effects. Like another poster said they could buy this cheap tat at a flea market or car boot sale.

Why does your belief you could do that make me naive? Even if you could it would take time to source the stuff in quantity and if you were doing it commercially you'd expect to be paid for your services, just as he does. As a large scale business I think it would make commercial sense to produce facsimiles rather than trying to find original items.

The point is he's apparently supplying this stuff to trusts in quantity and you aren't.

I don't agree it's unproven at all. Like many forms of therapy it has visible benefits that are hard to quantify. People are clearly less distressed as a result, if only temporarily. It's not as if he claims to be curing dementia. The cost savings on anti-psychotic drugs was a red herring. That's not what the therapy is for, but even if the drugs were free it would still be beneficial not to have to prescribe them purely to control the symptoms of the mental anguish of dementia rather than try and sooth the causes of it. Anti-psychotics have considerable side effects which are best avoided if possible.

Clearly his customers don't agree that it's a waste of time either.

It's not their money.

Not really enjoying the latest series as previous...it seems to be going 'x factor' by having dramatic music and showing the dragons reactions far more

Before I answer, who's money are you talking about?

Do you mean it's not the customers money? The customer being hospitals and nursing homes.

Or do you mean private enterprise should not invest in something the NHS buys (with our money)?

Agreed, too many back stories and tears now involved too. The lift to nowhere is really annoying me. Evan Davies continually telling us what's just happened and what is just about to happen is becoming too much to bear.

I still like to see the whacky inventions and deluded business ideas torn apart though, so will probably watch with fast forward to edit out the crap.

He didn't even get that right. At one point he said there were only two pitches to go, yet 4 were shown - 2 full ones, 2 edited ones.

I assumed he meant "full" pitches, not partial ones.

Something else odd happened at the end. On the last pitch, Deborah and Peter had made different equity offers, yet Peter then agreed to invest jointly with her. Davies' voiceover then had to explain exactly what he had offered, because it was different to what he said in vision. Come to think of it that must be a Dragon's Den first, Evan Davies saying something meaningful.

The stuff shown was about 10 yrs too late, people, say 70+ are now the "Swinging 60s"/Beatles generation., not the "12 B & W Tv/Coronation" generation.

Not really getting the POD idea it's totally unworkable. Every person would need different items in the POD, the set up he had would be great for someone from the 50's/60's but any later and your just going to end up confusing them more. And by the sounds of it every one would have to be tailored to each user.