Dragons' Den's Emma Grede found show 'intimidating' as a lifelong fan

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Dragons' Den's newest guest star Emma Grede has said she knows how nervous entrepreneurs must feel on the show, because she found it intimidating too as a lifelong fan.

Grede, who is a business partner of the Kardashians in her companies Good American and SKIMS, is a guest investor on the BBC One series which she says she has been watching since she was a child.

What, how, and why?

Few TV experiences look as nerve-wracking as stepping into the Dragons' Den to see whether your business idea will be shot down in flames, and the show's newest guest investor Emma Grede can confirm it is every bit as terrifying as expected.

Grede will appear in this week's episode alongside the likes of Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones, but even though trailers show her driving a tough deal, she wasn't immune to how intimidating the show is as a lifelong fan of it.

On Wednesday's The One Show, host Ronan Keating asked her: "When people first walk in and they see you all sitting there, they must be terrified."

Grede replied: "They absolutely must be. Even me going in there, it's just such a familiar scene, I've been watching that show since I was a kid. So I just find the whole thing must be so intimidating. It's a lot, coming and pitching your business when it's not on the telly, but this is difficult."

Asked whether the pressure affected people's pitches, she said: "Oh, 100 per cent. People are firing questions at you and you need to be on it, you need to have all your ducks in a row."

Comedian Frank Skinner, also a guest on The One Show, joked: "It does look like an S&M dungeon, that doesn't help."

Grede told him: "It's supposed to be intimidating, I think that's the point."

The business CEO is an investor on US version of the show Shark Tank and said: "I wanted to do something here because my nan who lives in Canvey Island can't watch Shark Tank. So I felt like doing something in the UK would be amazing and my nan would get to see it."

What else has been happening on The One Show?

Comedian Romesh Ranganathan was a recent guest on The One Show, where he shared his toe-curling story of managing to offend his sister-in-law over a Christmas gift.

Ranganathan explained: "I was doing a show, Taskmaster, and we had to select prizes that we'd lose if we didn't win the show. And they said 'Bring in your worst present that you've ever received.' And I just forget it's being televised.

"So I brought in this snow globe my sister-in-law got me. She'd done this Christmas snow globe and she'd photoshopped Santa hats onto me and the kids and gave it to me. And I brought it into the show and said, 'This is like trash.' Anyway, I didn't know Taskmaster was going to be that big, I had no idea! It was the first series.

"The next time they came round they said,'You said you liked that globe'. They gave me another globe the following Christmas to pretend they were joking, but I could tell it hurt."

The One Show airs on BBC One at 7pm on weekdays.

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