Rick Beardsell, 46, the one-time winner of Dragons’ Den and a successful British Masters athlete, who had secured £75,000 in funding from two dragons for his ShakeSphere protein drink bottles back in 2017, has been sentenced after inflating his company’s turnover to over £800,000 to secure two covid loans at the height of the pandemic.

He has been given a two-year suspended sentence after obtaining two maximum value bounce back loans for his sportswear manufacturing business, Sports Creative Limited, and using most of the funds to help buy a £1.3m home in a Cheshire village.

Chester Crown Court was told the £100,000 loan was spent on purchasing the five-bedroom house when it should have been used to benefit his Sports Creative Limited business, which was set up in January 2009.