Editor's Blog: Ling faces the dragons

I was lazing around the other night, channel hopping (a rare treat) when I came across a familiar face on a familiar TV programme. It was Ling Valentine, of LingsCars.com fame, on the BBC's Dragons' Den.

For those of you who don't know, Ling runs a car-leasing business from her base in the northeast of England. But that's underselling her. She is a self-promoting, fearless, energetic entrepreneur. silicon.com knows this not only from her homepage (one of the most crammed you will ever see) but from an email from her a year or so ago.

In our Weekly Round-Up we'd had the temerity to joke that when someone said they'd done a deal with "two leading e-tailers", or words to that effect, they didn't mean an Amazon.com or eBay but instead LingsCars.com and… well, I forget the other.

It took a short time for Ling to send in a note, to the Round-Up, to be precise. She began 'Aiieeiii…!' and explained her success to date - and asked what the Round-Up had ever done. What indeed.

I told one of our team to make friends with her. I think he was too afraid to pick up the phone.

So to Dragons' Den. Many of you will know the format. Would-be tycoons, often with a start-up or early-stage product on their hands, pitch to a room - the den - of assorted successful business types - the dragons.

They typically want some money for a certain stake in their venture. The dragons typically laugh them off the stage or get around to an offer, which is normally either less than they expected or the right sum only for a higher proportion of the business. Sometimes it's both those things.

Ling threw them a curve ball from the get go. Whereas many approach the den visibly shaking, she came straight in with a picture of her main marketing machine - a Chinese nuclear missile launcher. (I have no idea what this once was, though I'm pretty sure the missile isn't real. Pretty sure.)

When pressed with some tricky questions, she replied that she "eats dragons for breakfast".

And then the best bit. Two of the dragons offered to stump up the cash she was after - only she deemed it too dilutive.

"Thank you for your money - I refuse it," she said. And off she went.

Good for her!

I have mixed feelings about Dragons' Den. At its best it is very good entertainment and taps into growing entrepreneurialism in the UK, something I honestly believe took a step forward through all the ups and downs of the late-1990s internet boom.

At its worst, I feel the dragons too often sit there and ridicule the entrepreneurs, for no good reason, or worse still novice entrepreneurs walk away after giving up uncomfortably large parts of their businesses. And is the BBC's main economics editor well-placed as the host for what is basically light entertainment?

But Ling stood her ground and I now can only wish her well. I see she has wasted no time in getting a Dragons' Den image atop her website. There are also posts galore on YouTube, supposedly from Ling. (YouTube description: 'I am Ling. I am female Chinese human UK new car expert!')

I trust the BBC is happy with these. It'd be crazy not to be. And if the internet car leasing doesn't work out for Ling, there is always a career in marketing to be had.