Dragons Den: Why did Deborah Meaden have a 'black eye'?

A ‘scam’ has been circulating in adverts, which shows Dragons Den’s Deborah Meaden appearing to have a black eye. What happened?

Following a catch-up special being aired in December 2020, the rumour of Deborah reportedly having a black eye has started spreading again.

Fans of the business show, in which entrepreneurs can pitch their ideas to the line-up of multi-millionaires, are now looking back on the Dragon.

Here’s the lowdown on what happened to the BBC Two star…

Why did Deborah Meaden have a ‘black eye’?

It all started back in 2017, when an advert across the Internet seemed to feature a fake recent episode clip of Dragons Den.

The Dragon’s Den star appeared to have a black eye – however she has addressed the ‘scam’ herself, asking fans to report the advert.

So, she never actually had a black eye while filming for the series. It looks like the advert has been photoshopped!

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Awful, vile scam appearing in ads across the web. Please report to the site you see it on and here. https://t.co/IRdEGbyokE pic.twitter.com/SQ5rA4TAPg
— Deborah Meaden 🇺🇦 (@DeborahMeaden) April 2, 2019

What is the advert about?

The scam advert reportedly takes people to a website selling sex toys.

It is thought that the advert gets through to websites by slipping through any blocks put in place by Google’s advertising service.

As reported by Mediatel in 2017, The Guardian’s chief revenue officer Hamish Nicklin revealed that “sneaky workarounds” lead “bad ads” to appear on a publisher’s website.