Dragons' Den, Wednesday 9pm, BBC Two

Posted by Will Parkhouse

The last time I wrote about Dragons' Den on this blog, one of the inventors who had appeared on the show kindly posted me one of her products. It wouldn't happen these days: this was back in October 2007, when the recession was just a twinkle in Gordon Brown's eye – now you have to shell out at least a tenner simply to get a kick in the face.

Luckily for the inventing community, there are still five stern entrepreneurs sitting in a refurbished warehouse in the middle of some scrubland with stacks of cash just waiting to be doled out. Yes, eminently loveable James Caan, indelibly Scottish Duncan Bannatyne, genuinely dragon-like Deborah Meaden, weirdly tall Peter Jones, and derisive baldy glasses boy Theo Paphitis are back, introduced last night standing in a line with clouds whizzing by above their heads and heatwave haze shimmering around their suits like they were, well, the X-Men, basically.

We kicked off with a decoy. "It's a rare moment in the Den," intoned presenter Evan Davis, as the Dragons wet themselves laughing at the sight of a man staggering up the stairs looking like he'd escaped from the set of a Sweded version of that Volkswagen angels advert (he seemed to be wearing a giant pair of wings on his back, apparently some kind of paragliding aid). "It's an eccentric pitch," pointed out Evan, pointlessly. But after being impressed by nerve-addled Rupert Sweet-Escott's expertise, James Caan heroically offered to go into business with him. It was hardly a Susan Boyle moment, but a nice start nonetheless.

The other success came from one Steve Smith. It turns out people do still use landlines, because the Dragons were tussling for his Truecall product, which screens phone calls and tells would-be spam callers to bog off. He got a series of offers, but eventually walked off into the sunset with Peter Jones – not literally, that would be amazing – after PJ promised he could have the product on sale in all sorts of exotic locations "tomorrow morning".

Meanwhile, the idiotic ideas were seen off by a series of groanworthy puns from Evan, who praised the Polish vodka pitch for having "plenty of spirit", sympathised with the creator of a horsebox gadget who "had too much riding on her product" and, for a hangman's noose-style cat collar, quipped, unforgivably: "It fell to Peter Jones to give the CATASTROPHIC news." Maybe next week the Dragons could club together to buy some better gags.

Picture: BBC