Troubleshooter

Sir John Harvey-Jones (centre) on his return visit to Charles and Peter Morgan at Morgan Cars in 1999.

In Troubleshooter, Sir John Harvey-Jones, the flamboyant former chairman of ICI, went to look at ailing companies and offer his expertise as to how they could be turned around. The first episode - on 27 March 1990 - featured the venerable toy manufacturer Tri-ang. Sir John showed that the business world could provide popular television, mixing personality in with the analysis, and Troubleshooter ran for 5 series.

Tri-ang did not survive in the long term, but many companies featured on Troubleshooter took Sir John’s advice and thrived. These included Churchill China, Velden Engineering and Copella. Classic car company Morgan was a slightly different success story. They ignored Sir John's advice to increase capacity - preferring to maintain their exclusivity - but credited a boost in sales to their appearance on the show, which highlighted their traditional manufacturing methods.

Troubleshooter showed there was an appetite for entertaining programmes about industry and led to others such as Back to the Floor. Harvey-Jones died in 2008, but his show was revived in 2014 as Digby Jones: The New Troubleshooter. The brutal honesty that Sir John pioneered can be seen in personality driven business programmes such as Mary Queen of Shops, The Apprentice and Dragon's Den.