PUPPETRY theatre company, The Wright Stuff, is to face its most challenging audience to date.
The Kirkburton-based group is well known for using puppets to educate young people about issues such as drugs and sex.
But teenagers were nothing compared to the business tycoons in the BBC2 programme Dragon's Den.
In the cult show would-be entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to secure investment cash from a board of tycoons.
Artistic director Steve Wright saw the show and thought it would be a good launchpad for the company's new educational subscription website Get Your Head Round It, which needed £150,000.
He called Dragon's Den and had just days to develop a business plan and then audition.
Steve said: "It was a very intense experience.
"Even though I do performance for a living, having the five Dragons firing questions at you is very challenging.
"I took a puppet with me and they reacted quite well to that.
"It was a brilliant experience and my over-riding thought is that I would never be intimidated in a business meeting again.
"It was good to come through that."
The website covers the subject of citizenship for teenagers.
It deals with such topics as climate change, British identity, anti-social behaviour and anti-swot culture.
It includes a series of short films which schools, colleges, non-mainstream education settings and pupil referral units can use as lesson plans to deal with the topics covered.
Steve is bound by confidentiality to reveal how successful his bid was in Dragons Den.
The puppets also remained tight-lipped.
But his efforts will be screened at 8pm tomorrow in the first show of a new series.
The Dragon's Den team is led by former Millwall soccer club chairman and entrepreneur Theo Paphitis, who confesses he regularly works a 70 or 80-hour week.
He is joined by Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Duncan Bannatyne and Richard Farleigh.
