Gimlet-eyed multi-millionaires look on sceptically as you launch into your business pitch. Pulse tripping, you contemplate the excruciating embarrassment of freezing before the cameras and unseen millions gawping at their TV screens. Or maybe you manage to limp through to the end of your presentation only to hear your ambitions sneeringly dismissed by some slick-suited entrepreneur. Yes, Obiter has always savoured the sadistic delights of BBC’s Dragons’ Den, the programme where new businesses are given seed capital by already successful business people - or are shot down, ignominiously, in flames.

North-west firm Hugh Joseph McCarthy chose to put itself through this torture to raise money for the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital Charity. The solicitors had to strut their stuff before stationery and ladies’ lingerie supremo Theo Paphitis, one of the dragons on the programme.

Employment solicitor Helen Harradine told him that the firm had given 30 minutes’ free employment advice to clients and then invited them to make a donation to the charity. Harradine said: ‘Raising money was the easy bit. It was the presentation to a dragon that was scary. I do amateur drama, but this was much worse. We caused some amusement by claiming that not all lawyers are heartless.’