Comedy critic not appearing on Dragon's Den

We woz fooled

We have to admit to having been taken in by this claim from comedy critic Bruce Dessau that he was going on Dragon's Den to raise money for his website. It was published on April 1 - but after the noon deadline traditionally imposed for such pranks and without any obvious clues it was a gag (apart from the fact he put a £1m price tag on the site... though more outlandish claims have been made in the Den). Still, fair dos.. we woz fooled. This story is completely fabricated!

Comedy reviewer Bruce Dessau is to appear on the new series of Dragon’s Den, asking for £100,000.

The journalist sought the investment for ten per cent of his website, Beyond The Joke, thus valuing his business at £1million.

Writing on that website, Dessau said that part of his business plan was to turn his site into a print magazine, saying ‘there was a persuasive argument that a specialist magazine like this, mixing comedy news with comedy articles, could be a huge hit’.

Several comedy publications failed even before the digital age, but Dessau argues the success of Private Eye shows there is a market.

The writer also revealed that he enlisted the support of several high-profile comedians to appear alongside him in the programme – but he has been sworn to secrecy about the outcome.

According to web traffic monitoring service SimilarWeb, Beyond The Joke attracted 83,000 visitors in February, compared to more than 500,000 for Chortle.

Dragon's Den stars on BBC One from tonight at 8pm featuring Dragons Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Touker Suleyman, Tej Lalvani and Sara Davies. It is not known which of the 14 episodes in the series Dessau will appear in.