Don't sneer at Duncan if they slay this dragon

See me and my cross-legged chums here? We're the 'haves' and you're the 'have not got a clues'. I'm a dragon. Enter my den, hear me roar, watch me breathe fire.

I don't like you. I don't like your business. I'm out.

You wanna piece of my cash then you're going to have to beg for it on BBC2 laddie, then give me the rights to your idea, your house, your car, your first-born and conjugal visits with your sister, twice a week.

If that's too much trouble, there's a simpler way, of course. Yours for £7.19 on Amazon; Wake Up and Change Your Life by Duncan Bannatyne.

It sits alongside other DB works Anyone Can Do It, 43 Mistakes Businesses Make, How To Be Smart With Your Time and, importantly, How To Be Smart With Your Money. That last one runs to thousands of words on 224 pages.

I can do it in three: Don't get divorced.

It's bad enough when your most precious asset is a signed Tom Finney football shirt, let alone a multi-million pound business empire.

But lo it came to pass that Duncan has gone from a £430m fortune to being, allegedly, £122m in debt.

That's not all down to the former Mrs B, although he has branded her a gold-digger and been forced to put his mansion up for sale.

So the former ice cream seller has 99 problems and the ex is one. Ahem.

Now, the temptation is to laugh like a drain (never understood that phrase) at someone's impending fall from TV troubleshooter to mere mortal with a mortgage.

Being British, that's what we do ­– we get things wrong.

Because Bannatyne isn't some silver-spooned toff who's had life easy, far from it.

When he was a kid, his mum couldn't afford to buy him a bike. So he asked the local newsagents if there were any paper rounds going.

Being the good old days, they were all taken, but the shopkeeper said if he could find 100 new customers he could take them on. DB knocked doors, got the orders and got his bike. Norman Tebbit would be proud.

Not quite so proud a few years later when he got kicked out of the navy for threatening to throw an officer off a boat and spending nine months in the clink.

And despite a strong entrepreneurial spirit, he was still selling ice creams in his 30s from a van bought for £450.

Eventually, he sold the business for £28,000 and hasn't looked back. He's launched health clubs, care homes, children's nurseries . . .

He's even backed his own boyband, 2010 BGT flops Connected. Now called Reconnected.

Soon to be Disconnected.

But you can't keep a good man down and despite his recent setbacks Duncan has come out fighting, blasting a Daily Mail story about his demise as 'completely untrue'. In the DM? Surely not.

I'm no cheerleader for Mr Bannatyne, but those lining up to sneer are slaying the wrong dragon here.

We need more people with his drive, initiative and can-do spirit if we are to ever snap ourselves out of this economic malaise, stop feeling sorry for ourselves and start rolling out the raspberry ripple again.

Just not the latest set of idiots from The Apprentice.

Still, never one to miss an opportunity, Bannatyne's working on another book, Riding the Storm.

I like it Dunc. I like your business. I'm in.

Read Keith Harrison's column first in the weekend Shropshire Star