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Follow on Google News | My Half Hour with Duncan BannatyneWhat would you give for half an hour with Duncan Bannatyne? And if you were lucky enough to have it - what would you do with it? Read what I did with mine.
By: www.moanaboutmen.com How many series of Dragons Den have there been? How many people have applied to go on and failed? And how many of those successful get a full half hour with him - not many. But last week, I had my half hour with Duncan Bannatyne - oh yes! Duncan and I have had a bit of banter going on for some time now on Twitter - as have 360,000 other people so I dont count myself as special - there are many people that he tweets. He is a good tweeter - he tweets funny things - and serious things - I usually come in on the funny ones - I dont really do serious on Twitter. Anyway - when he first tweeted us back and then followed it was really exciting - one of the first famous people to reply. Of course - we then saw it as a sign that he thought moanaboutmen was a great website and in our little minds he was going to invest loads of money in it and make us millionaires - OK so that was in our dreams! Of course it didnt happen. But still we had this Twitter thing going on. When my friend was 40, I was sitting on Twitter one afternoon discussing the menu with my Twitter friends and also what to wear - Duncan was joining in with us all - suggesting what we should eat and what we should wear -really good fun it was. We have had many little bits of conversations like this, but the ongoing theme was everytime Angie and I went to London, I would say - are you in London today and he would be at his place in Spain, or away somewhere exotic - or even up North sometimes - but never in London when we were. So I joked that whenever he knew we were around he got the first plane/car/taxi out of the city to avoid meeting us!! Angie and I had to go to an Asda event last week - so I tweeted Duncan to say did he fancy a coffee - oh no - he was booking the first car out of the city of course! But to my surprise he said he may be free Wednesday afternoon!!! Panic started to set in then - mixed with a little bit of excitement - wondering what he was like etc etc but also why was I suggesting coffee anyway - it was only a bit of a game - I never dreamt he would really meet us! But I went along with it and I emailed his PA who said that there was no time to meet Duncan - he had a full diary - so then I had to give Duncan stick on Twitter as he had done what he always did - avoided meeting us! So when we got another message on Wednesday morning asking what time we would be around till, it was a bit of a shock but I still didnt think it would happen. Then in the afternoon a message from his PA -Duncan would meet us at five o clock for a coffee at a cafe near his flat! My first reaction was to find the nearest wine bar and down a quick glass of rose - Angie was also nervous and Niamh, her daughter was with us and she was worse than both of us! What to say, what to talk about, what would he be like? What to do with our half hour with Duncan Bannatyne - how many people must have thought that when they walked into Dragons Den. But we werent in Dragons Den were we? We were in a coffee shop in the middle of Covent Garden on a boiling hot day. When Duncan walked into the shop he was really friendly - he was with one of his colleagues who was also a nice bloke. We sat and had a coffee - talked a bit about moanaboutmen but not much - he said he didnt realise how websites made money - and talked a bit about the book - his new book will be published by the same company that published ours - but is likely to sell a few more! We talked a bit about Dragons Den and the new Dragon that was coming in - (that part of our chata is censored!) and just about schools and a bit of nothing really. It was a really strange experience - someone so well known sat by you and someone who you tweet so freely suddenly sat in front of you - what to talk about!!! But he is only human after all - he may be on the TV, have loads of fans and followers - but he is only human like you and I - so why it was such a worry, I dont really know. Would I do it again? I have met a few people we tweet and I enjoy meeting them - but my tweeting is always for the promotion of the website and when I meet the tweeters I always do it with the benefit of the website at the back of my mind and I dont want to start coming across as some kind of celebrity stalker - and perhaps I am in danger of that!!! Did I make the most of my half hour with Duncan Bannatyne? Well that is a question that I cant answer - but I enjoyed meeting him, it is another experience that I can write in my moanaboutmen diary - and something that lots of other people would like to do.............so the answer to that, I would say - is YES. End
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