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 (DOAC).
In the seven years since it started, Bartlett, 32, has interviewed everyone from Sir Richard Branson to Boris Johnson and Simon Cowell — not to mention dozens of other business leaders — in the process turning his podcast into a global brand that regularly ranks in the top five most popular in the world.
Recently however, Bartlett’s choice of guests have been noticeably more off piste. Earlier this month, for example, the episode featured a near two-hour chat with self-styled ‘orgasm queen’ and ‘intimacy coach’ Susan Bratton, discussing how listeners could have better sex.
A week later, the founder of Science of People — a business that coaches people in communication skills — Vanessa van Edwards talked about body language and the importance of getting the right ‘resting face’.
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.
In an investigation published last week, they claimed Bartlett was amplifying ‘harmful’ health misinformation, allowing dubious — and disproven — claims from guests to pass by unchallenged in a fashion that could create a ‘dangerous’ legacy of distrust of conventional medicine.
Among them was the suggestion by US biology professor Dr Thomas Seyfried that a ketogenic diet — meaning fewer carbohydrates and more fat — can stave off cancer and that modern treatments were akin to ‘medieval cures’.
Another saw doctor Aseem Malhotra claim Covid vaccines were a ‘net negative to society’ — when varying studies calculate that they averted some tens of thousands to over a million deaths in the UK, alone.
Diary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett (pictured) has been condemned for sharing harmful health information on his podcast that could put cancer patients at risk
In February, a personal trainer branded Steven Bartlett ‘the biggest factor of misinformation on the planet’ and slammed the businessman for ‘platforming charlatans’ on his podcast
Neither guests were challenged by Bartlett nor were the myriad of other highly questionable and sometimes downright ludicrous health claims presented on his show, including the idea that disorders like autism and polycystic ovarian syndrome can be ‘reversed’ by diet.
To date, Bartlett has remained notably quiet over the claims, bar a statement from his production company saying his podcast was an ‘open-minded, long form conversation’ from a range of voices ‘not just those Steven and the DOAC team necessarily agrees with’.
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.
‘A used car dealer for the soul’, was the withering assessment of one journalist in a business profile earlier this year. ‘The king of self-mythologisation’ was another verdict, this one from satirical magazine Private Eye.
Certainly, not all Bartlett’s claims withstand scrutiny, from his description of the business he founded as a ‘billion-pound company’ — in fact it sold last year for £7.7million — to his depiction of his life as rags to riches.
Bartlett was actually raised in Plymstock, a leafy, middle-class suburb outside Plymouth by his Nigerian mother Esther and British father Graham.
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.
‘My parents had no money,’ Barlett said in 2016. ‘I came to realise fairly quickly that if I was going to have stuff in my life, it was going to be down to me.’
The Dragons on BBC’s Dragons Den featuring Deborah Meaden, Steven Bartlett and Peter Jones
Bartlett first attracted controversy in January for supporting a firm that claimed to resolve symptoms of the debilitating illness ME with stick-on ear ‘seeds’. Charities claimed there was no evidence that the ‘seeds’ can help the condition.
Steven Barlett’s brother Jason became CEO of the ear seeds firm, only to silently step aside from the role months later, following the controversy.
This may come as a surprise to former Plymstock neighbours in the pleasant, suburban street where Bartlett was raised in a five-bedroom detached house – and where similar properties are on the market today for nearly £500,000.
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.
Esther, meanwhile, has worked as a hairdresser and beautician and was co-director of a property business called Mannamead, though it was dissolved two years ago.
No mention of any of this, of course, in Bartlett’s biography.
That’s not to say he didn’t display business acumen from a young age.
After being expelled from the sixth form of Plymstock School for poor attendance, he was later ‘unexpelled’ for helping to raise revenue for the school, negotiating a business deal in which they were given free vending machines and allowed to keep the profit. (This story was backed up by a teacher, who appeared alongside Bartlett on an episode of BBC panel show Would I Lie To You? in January last year).
At 18, Bartlett studied business management at Manchester Metropolitan University, but dropped out after just one lecture. He says he squatted in a partially boarded-up house and recalled his elation, when penniless, at finding £13.40 in loose change down the back of a seat in a takeaway.
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.
Steven Bartlett ‘s nutrition adverts for Zoe and Huel have been banned by the advertising watchdog for being ‘misleading’
Steve Bartlett’s credibility remained sufficiently intact for him to continue as an entrepreneur and investor on Dragon’s Den – pictured on the BBC show
Three sponsored posts were shared on Facebook in February and March in which the Dragons Den ‘s star praised the products from the health science brands
Connecting people with brands through social media, the marketing agency was turning over £6million a year by 2017, Bartlett boasted in an interview.
What he failed to mention was that his company had also been censured by the Competition and Markets Authority. It found that Social Chain used its own social media accounts, and arranged for widely followed personalities to promote films, games and takeaway and dating apps, without readers being informed that the content was paid-for advertising.
The company also came under fire for plagiarising content from other social media forums like Twitter and Reddit, although on this occasion Bartlett hit back, insisting that it was par for the course in the digital world.
‘Any publisher which puts out thousands of pieces of content every single day runs the risk of one of those images or sentences they’ve used having been used by someone else,’ he said.
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.
Less than a year later, Bartlett and McGregor both exited the business — while retaining what Bartlett later described as a ‘significant’ shareholding — to pursue other business opportunities amid talk that the company had a market valuation in excess of $600million (£477million).
This led to raised eyebrows when, in 2023, it was revealed that another social and digital media company, Brave Bison, had acquired the entire issued share capital of Social Chain Limited for just £7.7million.
‘I thought this was a big public company worth hundreds of millions. I don’t understand this,’ serial entrepreneur Sam Parr wrote on Twitter. ‘Can someone explain?’
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
Steven Bartlett (pictured last year) was raised in Plymstock, a leafy, middle-class suburb outside Plymouth by his Nigerian mother Esther and British father Graham
The advert for Zoe, which offers health testing and dietary advice services, featured an image of Bartlett with a Zoe patch on his arm, as he claimed it might ‘change your life’
Another businessman, Timothy Armoo, founder and CEO of marketing agency Fanbytes, suggested Bartlett had engaged in ‘misdirection and half-truths’.
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.
Either way, his credibility remained sufficiently intact for him to continue as an entrepreneur and investor on Dragon’s Den, the BBC business show that he joined in 2021 aged just 28, making him the youngest Dragon to appear on the show.
He’s since invested in four companies, among them placing £50,000 into Sheffield based businesswoman Gisele Boxer’s Acu Seeds firm, which markets gold-plated ‘ear seeds’ she claimed could cure chronic fatigue condition myalgic encephalomyelitis, and tackle anxiety and insomnia. After complaints from viewers, the BBC was forced to put a text disclaimer on screen clarifying that they were ‘not intended to be a cure for any medical condition’.
Indeed, controversy has continued to dog Bartlett’s business dealings. In August, he was reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after it emerged that he had promoted positive reviews of two companies in which he has personal involvement without declaring his interest.
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.’
The other is for Huel, a meal replacement drink business where Bartlett is a director. In its advert Bartlett drinks one of the products and claims it is the best to be released by the company to date.
Both adverts have since been removed amid further derision. ‘How did he think he would get away with it?’ Ryan T Williams, a marketing business owner, asked on X. ‘This is like the guy who owns McDonald’s telling you Big Macs are good for you.’
Pictured: Touker Suleyman, Sara Davies, Deborah Meaden, Peter Jones and Steven Bartlett on Dragons Den
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
Doubtless this is all water off Bartlett’s back, given that Diary Of A CEO seems to go from strength to strength. Since the first episode in 2017 — quite literally a rambling monologue from Bartlett — it has become not just a hit podcast but global phenomenon, with an accompanying book and YouTube channel.
In a typically bullish boast earlier this year, Bartlett claimed that the podcast was in line to receive around £20million from advertising.
Today, it is less a business podcast than a motivational, lifestyle brand. Some have suggested that this change in direction may lie in part down to the influence of Bartlett’s girlfriend Melanie Vaz Lopes, a 31-year-old French influencer turned ‘wellness guru’ who has her own interest in alternative therapies.
Boasting 135,000 followers on Instagram under her handle @meloai, her content focuses on ‘breathwork’, yoga and self-advancement through Auraya, a beauty and wellbeing business, and another outfit in Bali.
‘I believe that each one of us has the power to unlock our inner magic, heal, and live life to the fullest,’ she claims.
The couple met on Instagram in 2016 and dated for a year before splitting up in 2017, with Bartlett saying he wanted to focus on his business. They reconciled in 2022, after he proclaimed he realised ‘she was the one’.
In typically flamboyant style, Bartlett made a public declaration of love for Melanie on the first night of his Diary Of A CEO tour at London’s Palladium theatre, confessing his love for her before the House Gospel Choir sang Stevie Wonder’s I’ll Be Loving You Always, as heart-shaped confetti fell from the ceiling.
But then, as we have seen, Bartlett is something of a master of the grand declaration. Back in 2016, he told an interview that he craved ‘a good life’, adding: ‘I wanted to have all the things that my friends have. I wanted to create my own birthdays and Christmases.’ On that front, at least, he cannot be doubted.