Duncan Bannatyne OBE was born in Clydebank, Scotland on the 2nd February 1949. He had a relatively poor upbringing as the 2nd of seven children. At a young age his mother told him she couldn’t afford to buy him a bike, so Duncan asked around the local newsagents to see if he could start a paper round. He was told that to get the job he would need a list of 100 potential customers. He then spent time knocking on doors in the surrounding area, and through his determination, managed to produce the list. He got the job and was able to purchase a bike.

At the age of 15, Duncan decided to leave home to create a new life for himself and so he could see something different. He signed up for 12 years with the Royal Navy to work in a ship’s engine room at RNTE Shotley near Ipswich. Duncan served in the Navy for several years before he threatened to throw an officer off a boat landing jetty in Scotland and received a dishonourable discharge. He says he did this in part as a reaction to this particular officer’s abuse of his position, in part as he was dared by others on the ship to do it, and in part as a way for him to try and get out of the Navy. After this he spent nine months in the Colchester military detention centre before being discharged at the age of 20.

Back in Glasgow at the age of 20, Duncan was penniless and without references or qualifications. At 23, tragedy struck when he lost his sister, Helen, to a suspected brain tumour. The death of his sister saw Duncan go slightly off the rails. He was arrested for being drunk and disorderly and jailed for several days. He still believes to this day that her death was a catalyst in his decision as to how live his life from then on. At that point he became the oldest child in the family overnight and he believes her death made him realise he wanted to make something of himself. After this, he still had no references or qualifications and now had a criminal record. He therefore decided that he wanted to become an entrepreneur.

At the age of 29, Duncan and his first wife moved to Stockton-on-Tees in the north of England from the island of Jersey, as the island represented a difficult business climate for non-locals. At 30 Duncan worked in a bakery when he spotted an opportunity that would change his life forever. To supplement his income whilst he worked in the bakery, Duncan would buy cars from auctions, do them up, and then sell them on. One day he noticed an ice cream van for sale and decided to buy it and start up his own business. He purchased the van for £450, and within 3 years was running a business that used over six vans and was generating annual revenue of approximately £250,000. This roughly worked out at between £30,000 and £60,000 profit each year. After 3 years he sold the business for £28,000.

His next venture was to set up a private care home business, his first development being one of the first brand new purpose built nursing homes in the country. He needed £360,000 to finance this first care home, but at that stage Duncan did not have a financial track record and banks thus refused to lend him any money. He managed to pay the first bill for the new care home from the money he had made by selling the ice cream business. He paid off the second bill by selling his car and loading £30,000 onto three credit cards. To be able to afford to pay the third bill he had to sell his house. Even after he had sold every major asset that he had owned, Duncan still had outstanding debts for the building work of the care home and required extra finance to fund the payments. However, the value placed on this care home was already £600,000, so he returned to the banks. He then decided to remortgage the nursing home, paid off the debts, bought another plot of land, and began building a second care home.

The business then began to expand rapidly, with Duncan not afraid of borrowing money to finance the developments. As soon as one care home was built, he re-mortgaged it and moved on to build the next one. Within three years he owned 9. In 1997, Duncan sold the care home business for over £45 million.

Since then, Duncan has branched into Health Clubs and is now the owner of the popular Bannatyne’s Health Clubs chain. He is the director of Bannatyne Enterprises and oversees an exclusive hotel, bar and casino and, more recently, new housing developments, as well as the Health Clubs chain. In 2006, he acquired 26 Health Club’s from Hilton Hotels, which made Bannatyne’s the largest independent chain of Health Clubs in the UK.

In October 2008, he opened the £12 million Bannatyne Spa Hotel in Hastings. In the 2009 Sunday Times Rich List, his current wealth is estimated to be £320 million. He is also by far the wealthiest of the Dragons in the BBC TV series “Dragon’s Den”.

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