Given its lengthy history, it's perhaps understandable that Dragon's Den star Steven Bartlett has had to cast his net ever wider for guests to appear on his popular podcast, The Diary Of A CEO .
This kind of focus is certainly a shift away from the podcast's origins, which have latterly morphed from an exploration of what it takes to be an entrepreneur into more off-beat, fringe territory – although the BBC used two rather more critical adjectives to describe some of the content hawked to its more than eight million regular subscribers.
Diary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett has been condemned for sharing harmful health information on his podcast that could put cancer patients at risk But then this is not the first time that questions have been raised over both the business dealings and biography of a man who has styled himself as a rock star of the entrepreneurial world.
The pair had met when Graham's work as a civil engineer with a large energy company took him to Africa. In 1994, when Barlett — the youngest of four siblings — was two, the family moved to Plymouth, embarking on a life that he has since characterised as one of significant financial struggle. Moreover, by the time Bartlett was eight, his father was working as an associate for a civil engineering company and today runs his own consultancy company.
None of this dented his undoubted entrepreneurial zeal. At 20, he launched Wallpark, a website where students could reach out to others in the same city, although it failed to take off. Within a year, though, along with fellow student dropout Dominic McGregor, he had set up Social Chain, the business that would make his name.
Read More Steven Bartlett under fire as top experts claim podcast guru is sharing harmful health information Connecting people with brands through social media, the marketing agency was turning over £6million a year by 2017, Bartlett boasted in an interview. Either way, there's little question the company was growing — albeit not quite to the 'billion-pound' status of which Bartlett bragged it was heading in interviews. In October 2019, Social Chain merged with German e-commerce company Lumaland AG and was listed on the Düsseldorf Stock Exchange.
Dragon's Den star Steven Bartlett partied with One Direction's Liam Payne at Yours, new Deansgate restaurant, which is owned by Club Liv's Mo Mohamud Bartlett subsequently took to professional networking site LinkedIn to explain his position, saying he was under contract to work for the company 'on a range of strategic matters' at the time of the $600million valuation.
One, on the website of health testing and nutrition firm Zoe, in which Bartlett is an investor - shows him wearing one of their glucose monitors on his arm, accompanied by the quote: 'If you haven't tried Zoe yet, give it a shot. It might just change your life.' Huel, known for its vitamin-enriched food items - whose ads featured Bartlett stating that its Daily Greens powder was the 'best product' it had released