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A Moment With James Caan Of Dragons' Den

March 2008 Do you ever get the impression God works in funny ways…I do, all the time!

Being a member of London Chamber, I noticed they were organising a lunch at the reputable Tamarai restaurant in London with a speech by James Caan of Dragons’ Den fame from BBC.

Caan has been creating, building and selling businesses for over 20 years. In 1985, he set up the Alexander Mann Group, one of the UK’s leading HR outsourcing companies, and achieved a turnover of £130 million before selling it to a private equity firm in 2002, now he is the founder and CEO of private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw. So you can imagine why I was interested in attending the event, however it was not meant to be!

I set off early in the morning at 8am for London expecting a 2-hour journey, arriving at the restaurant at gone 1pm…you’d be right to question what had taken so long!

I had managed to make it to London by 11am on the A5 Edgware Road near Cricklewood sitting in a traffic jam.

Unaware that the day was going to turn into such chaos, the most bizarre set of events began to unfold.

The car in front of me didn’t proceed when everyone in front of them had moved on and there was now a complete standstill behind us both. I had my window wound down, and I beeped my car horn a couple of times before I realised looking in the side mirror that something was terribly wrong. The lady driving the vehicle was either dead or had gone to sleep, what was I going to do next?

I jumped out to wake her – however as I banged on the window there was no sign of life and I panicked. I was about to open the driver door and realised that she would topple out. I called the lady driving behind me to keep an eye on the injured party while I rang the ambulance and ran to a medical centre across the road that someone had pointed out nearby. Luckily the doctors from the surgery responded immediately. She’d suffered an epileptic seizure and the doctors from the surgery took care of her, while we awaited the ambulance which took over 30 minutes to get there which is absolutely unacceptable.

I travelled through London to get to the restaurant hitting masses of traffic. Eventually as I arrived at the restaurant, there were two gentlemen about to leave. I asked if the event was over and explained my eventful trip, and explained that i’d travelled from Leicester. This pleasant and charming pair unbeknown to me was Mr James Caan himself and colleague – with all my good deeds of the day it didn’t dawn upon me that I would be meeting him personally. He was polite and witty which made it easier to explain.

I spent 5 minutes with them outside the restaurant in a dialogue of apologising and demanding a business card from him since I had missed his presentation after realising i was speaking with the man himself! I was disappointed to have missed the motivational speech, however I knew I had done a good deed for the day and that was more important at the time. I guess I got 5 minutes of his undivided attention by being so very late and everyone else got to share his presence…I was the lucky one!