REVEALED: The sorry trail of half-truths, controversies and crankery now threatening Diary Of A CEO host Steven Bartlett. As the Dragons' Den star prepares to wed, FRED KELLY reveals the ex-colleague who complains of 'dishonesty' at the heart of his empire

It sounds like a modern-day fairytale. A mixed-race university drop-out born into poverty, reduced to stealing food from a corner shop, who sets up a company from his bedroom and becomes a multi-millionaire by the age of 25. 

For precocious entrepreneur Steven Bartlett, this was only the start. There followed a best-selling self-help book, a hugely popular podcast and the ultimate endorsement for a self-made 'tycoon': an invitation to join the team of Dragons' Den.

And recently, Bartlett has made his most meaningful investment yet: a large diamond engagement ring for his leading lady, the yoga instructor fiancee Melanie Lopes.

'When she says things, I listen very intently. She's very special,' Bartlett garbled to American businesswoman Maggie Sellers Reum earlier this year on her podcast, Hot Smart Rich. 'She's like an angel that fell from the sky… Mel helps me anchor.

'And then I'll have kids and a family and responsibilities and dependencies. And that's what I think it takes to be a good man, but also a good human being.'

Recently, however, critics have wondered if Bartlett's upward trajectory might be juddering to a halt. A series of missteps, alleged half-truths and controversies have plagued the host since he shot to fame in early 2022 as the youngest Dragon investor.

There have been accusations that Bartlett exaggerated his personal wealth and business acumen, that he used his platform on the BBC to advertise products in breach of the state broadcaster's guidelines, and perhaps most damagingly that he's a 'Poundshop philosopher' who frequently peddles dangerous misinformation on his chart-topping podcast.

Even some of his mainly young, 'progressive' followers are starting to question if their idol isn't quite who he's made himself out to be. The fallout from a recent episode of his Diary Of A CEO podcast – Britain's most popular podcast series of 2025 on Spotify – in which he discussed birthrates with reality TV personality Chris Williamson, whose credentials include appearing on the dating programme Love Island, is ongoing.

In the episode, released on December 29, Williamson appeared to blame feminist reproductive rights activist and blogger Abigail Porter – known as 'The Girl with the List' due to her online video series listing her reasons for not wanting children – for declining birthrates. Bartlett nodded along.

Williamson's comments were widely deemed regressive and misogynistic. 'Diary Of A CEO is Right-wing manosphere cosplaying as liberals,' complained one social media user. Another compared Bartlett to controversial figure Joe Rogan, host of his eponymous podcast, the most popular in the world.

Perhaps, however, another listener summed up the mood best when they said: 'Steven Bartlett has always been bad vibes. I'm so glad others are now realising.'

A spokesman for the podcast told The Mail on Sunday that 'Steven Bartlett does not adopt the opinions of his guests, nor is the format intended to pass judgment on personal viewpoints'.

But this is far from Bartlett's only brush with controversy. He was born in August 1992, the youngest of four siblings.

His Nigerian mother and British father moved the family to Britain two years later and settled in what Bartlett described as a 'nice, white middle-class area' of Plymouth in Devon. He subsequently revealed that money was always tight and that his family were 'on the verge of bankruptcy for about 15 years – we didn't have birthday or Christmas presents'.

In his book, The Diary Of A CEO, he describes how embarrassed he was by the dilapidated family home. 'Our back garden was decorated with fridges, VCRs and other miscellaneous projects littered throughout the waist-high grass.'

He says his entrepreneurial spirit began aged ten when he sold cigarettes in the school playground.

He was the only non-white student at his school, where he ran several money-making schemes. By the sixth form he was organising school trips, from which he took a cut, and stocking the school vending machines.

After scraping through his GCSEs and A-levels, he said that he dropped out of a business course at Manchester Metropolitan University after a single lecture and – while allegedly being pursued by bailiffs for unpaid university residence fees and shoplifting to feed himself – Bartlett co-founded 'social media marketing agency' Social Chain.

By 2020, Bartlett claimed his company was worth £300million. This, it has since emerged, was at best misleading.

The truth is that Social Chain had been purchased in October 2019 by a German e-commerce conglomerate called Lumland AG. It was this far larger parent company which was then valued at just below £500million when it was floated on the Dusseldorf Stock Exchange. However, clearly, while Bartlett had been made 'co-CEO' of the parent group, the small marketing agency he founded himself was not worth anywhere near that half a billion sum.

Indeed, in 2023, a company called Social Chain was sold by the German parent for just £17.2million. The deal prompted CEO of marketing rival Fanbytes, Timothy Armoo, to accuse Bartlett of 'misdirection and half-truths'. But Bartlett's spokesman insists the sold firm was not the Dragon's original, despite sharing the same name.

Quotes on the employment transparency website Glassdoor, unearthed by the MoS, give a further insight into the culture at Social Chain while Bartlett was in charge. 'Pay is low across the company apart from those in the 'clique'. The management is pretty much non-existent. Development and growth opportunities in the company are minimal,' declared one former employee.

'There is a huge turnover of staff as once they join they realise they have been sold the 'dream'. There is no HR presence at all, only a 'happiness' person.'

A further former employee complained of a 'lack of diversity' – despite the fact that Bartlett regularly cites his own mixed-race heritage in interviews, notably when he joined Dragon's Den aged 28. Bartlett, through his spokesman, rejected all of these allegations and stressed – on the issue of diversity – that Bartlett hired a female Managing Director to lead the firm's largest business unit.

And yet, of course, by the time the allegations came out about Social Chain after its sale in 2023, it hardly mattered to Bartlett. Two years previously, in 2021, he had become a household name on our screens alongside Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden and the other Dragon investors. (He also stepped down as chief executive of Social Chain in August 2020.)

However, even on this reality show, Bartlett has managed to create trouble. In January 2024, donning a pair of earrings and a necklace, he elected to invest £50,000 for 12.5 per cent equity in 'Acu Seeds' – a startup which sold £30 'ear seeds' (a metallic pellet attached to the ear with clear tape). Founder Gisele Boxer claimed a similar product had aided her recovery from ME, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.

Following the episode's airing on the BBC, Boxer declared on Instagram: 'In the last four weeks, we have received nearly 30,000 orders, 10,000+ customer emails and 50,000 new social media followers.' She added: 'I have been working closely with Steven Bartlett to put in place new processes and support to operate at this new level.'

However, organisations that support the quarter of a million ME sufferers in the UK accused Boxer of making 'unfounded' claims about her product, which is essentially little more than a miniature acupuncture device, typically used to treat pain, anxiety and insomnia. Media regulator Ofcom received 500 complaints from the public about the episode.

A qualifying statement was later added to the Dragon's Den episode on iPlayer, stating: 'Acu Seeds are not intended as a cure for any medical condition and advice should always be sought from a qualified healthcare provider about any health concerns.'

Bizarrely, however, after Bartlett's investment, filings on Companies House show that it was Steven's older brother and occasional business partner Jason Bartlett who was appointed director. Steven's name appeared nowhere in official filings.

The company also changed its name from Acu Seeds to East Healing Ltd. The plot then thickened after Jason resigned as a director on February 14, less than a month after his appointment. Bartlett's spokesman denied any wrongdoing, describing the Companies House filings as a clerical error.

Later that same year, in August 2024, Bartlett again found himself in hot water after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint and found that an advert for diet brand ZOE that featured Bartlett had 'misled' consumers by failing to disclose that Bartlett was not a mere advocate but in fact an investor.

'If you haven't tried ZOE yet, give it a shot,' declared Bartlett in the disingenuous Facebook advertisement. 'It might just change your life.'

But this wasn't the end of it. For the same day, ASA ruled that two Facebook adverts for the 'meal replacement' powder Huel, also featuring Bartlett, had failed to appropriately disclose that the star not only had a financial interest in the highly processed product but was also on the board of directors.

As marketing manager Ryan T Williams declared: 'How did he think he would get away with it? This is like the guy who owns McDonald's telling you Big Macs are good for you.'

But nor was this Bartlett's first brush with advertising regulations, having already been censored by the Competition and Markets Authority early in his career, after Social Chain was found to have used celebrity personalities to promote products without disclosing the videos and posts as advertisements.

In December 2024, a BBC investigation ruled that Bartlett's Diary Of A CEO podcast is 'amplifying harmful health misinformation' and that across 15 episodes there were 14 health-related statements that 'went against extensive scientific evidence'.

In one such episode under scrutiny, Dr Thomas Seyfried claimed that the ketogenic diet – which replaces carbohydrates with fats – could treat cancer. In further episodes, experts alleged that Covid was an 'engineered weapon' and that autism could be 'reversed' with a certain diet. The BBC World Service concluded that all these eccentric claims were made with little or no challenge from the host.

However, as podcasts are not covered by the media regulator Ofcom, Mr Bartlett has not broken any rules. For his part, the host claimed his guests were afforded 'freedom of expression'. Regardless, Cecile Simmons, an investigative researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, noted: 'Health-related clickbait content with scary titles does really well online, with the algorithm amplifying that.'

In 2025, Bartlett made sweeping steps to reposition himself, resigning as a director from all his remaining business interests, including Flight Story Group Ltd which controls his private equity firm Flight Fund.

The latter came under fire in 2024 for failing to disclose exactly what investor cash was being used for, whether equity investment or otherwise. The firm was also alleged to have been requesting discounted valuations from entrepreneurs of 'typically 50 per cent' in exchange for the supposed beneficial association with Bartlett. Bartlett's spokesman denies this, insisting no entrepreneur made such a complaint.

Bartlett hasn't disclosed the reason for giving up the directorship of his various business interests. However, one senior analyst who asked to remain anonymous told the MoS there are only three good reasons for similar action: if the companies are about to be sold or merged, if the individual is about to leave the UK, or if they have been ordered to resign directorships by the Financial Conduct Authority due to impropriety. There is no indication that any of these apply to Bartlett – who has consolidated his business interests under one US-based entity: steven.com.

Regardless, of course, Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast has continued to be an enormous success, with the host boasting in 2024 that he was set to make £20million from advertising alone.

Since its inception in 2017, Bartlett has interviewed – or, as he prefers to say, 'had conversations with' – everyone from Right-wing Canadian academic Jordan Peterson to music mogul Simon Cowell, disgraced Covid-era health secretary Matt Hancock and boyband star Louis Tomlinson – over more than 700 episodes.

The man behind this hit once described himself as 'selfish' and admitted that a previous romantic relationship fell apart due to 'the amount of things I have competing for my attention every single day'.

With Bartlett's star on the wane and serious questions over his character, Melanie Lopes – the French-Portuguese yoga instructor – may just find that her new fiance has a few less things competing for his attention every single day.

Additional reporting by Dolly Busby