GREASE up your gadgets and wash your widgets, for those cash-breathing dragons are back in their lair for a new series of Dragons' Den (Monday, BBC2, 9pm).

All the usual suspects are back - Duncan, Deborah, etc. but for a brief second I thought the show's budget had been boosted by its minted stars when they announced that there was a new dragon and he was none other than James Caan.

Turned out it wasn't the James Caan, Hollywood actor and star of The Godfather, though, but just plain old James Caan, venture capitalist and owner of an unfeasibly large wad.

Now that was slightly disappointing in itself, but it got worse when I realised that Caan was there to replace Richard Farleigh, the tiny, mushroom-haired, antipodean who you could always rely on to be much nicer, smaller, better dressed and more tanned than the rest of his fellow-rich listers.

So that's the new line-up and boy do they mean business.

And just to prove it, the opening title sequence was an hilarious grainy, fast-cut film with loads of overhead shots of them all marching down a back alley, Reservoir Dogs-style, led by the meanest dragon of all, Deborah Meaden.

The guys were in dark suits, Meaden, to show she was the lady, was shoehorned into a too-tight pale number, which made her look like a refugee from a seaside postcard.

For anyone who hasn't seen DD, hopeful inventors and entrepreneurs enter the den' and try to convince the dragons (all rich, successful business sorts) to give them money to fund their ideas in return for a share in any future success.

First up was a David Beckham lookalike. Well, to be fair, if you bumped into him in Sainsbury's you'd never go: "Look, it's David Beckham, let's see if he smells of gold and old footballs."

No, you'd more likely go: "That guy's trying to look like Becks, bless him."

His vague resemblance to Beckham was a clue to the sort of business proposition he had up his sleeve - but just in case we were too thick to guess, in minced a Will Smithalike (not bad, but could also have been Jamie Foxx or Reggie off Radio 1) and a trick Captain Sparrow/Johnny Depp, who looked good at first, but the longer he lingered, the more he looked like a fairground fortune-teller with an upper-lip-hair problem.

Fake Becks couldn't really explain exactly what his business was - partly because he couldn't speak that well (unless that was part of the Beckham disguise) and partly because he didn't really know himself. He waffled about hiring out the likes of Johnny, Will or himsef to attend events or parties and thus give ordinary people a taste of the celebrity lifestyle'.

But the dragon nostrils were already puffing and blowing and after intense grilling, Dave, Will and Johnny left empty-handed. Hopefully they all got on the tube and hordes of people asked for their autographs and Dave said: "See, those dragons don't know nuffin', I knew we was right. Maybe next time I'll take Hanibal the Cannibal and Frank Sinatra..."

Weirdly, one of the wannabe businessmen who followed with a summer festival idea was the double of Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). And, thinking about it, shove a dark wig on Deborah Meaden and she could be his oft-partner, Nick Frost.

Oh, and Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter who presents Dragon's Den, could be that funny-looking journalist, Evan Davis.

And on the subject of using popular culture to get attention - GMTV took its legendary talent for crassness to a whole new low when it named a film about an impoverished, malnourished Tanzanian child called Neema meeting, Fiona Phillips Finding Neema. No I'm not joking.

Couch grouch Phillips was pestering Neema in the name of some charity or other but she didn't do much other than snivel a bit.

What would have helped was if Sharon off Eastenders (AKA Letitia Dean) had donated that huge mound of chiffon she was inexplicably swaddled in for Strictly Come Dancing - now that would have dressed the whole of Neema's village for a year.