A dazzling awards ceremony with speeches and special guests is hard to turn down but my first visit to Richard’s House Children’s Hospice on Saturday was extra special. As soon as I arrived at their red carpet event in Beckton, South East London, I knew the Oscar winners would each have an inspirational story to tell.

Richard House is London’s first children’s hospice, caring for young people with life-limiting illnesses and supporting their families. The Hospice’s very own Oscars celebrated the great, entrepreneurial work done there over the last year, in particular films and animations created by the children. They have a group at the Hospice called Living Films who meet monthly purely to make animations and videos, which is fantastic fun for the children and builds their confidence.

Awards were handed out in a number of categories, and Hayley Mac, Miss Commonwealth International, was on hand to present the best animation, best film, best director and best actor / actress awards personally.

The ceremony is a brilliant, inventive idea and everyone there, the children and their proud parents and siblings alike, had broad smiles on their faces. Richard House is a place of love and happiness and meeting the children was truly inspirational.

I had a great time and will definitely be back for the ceremony next year. In fact, I have already thought of a new category for the awards. You’ll have to wait and see what it is but I think it will go down well…

Duncan Bannatyne's charity skydive organised via Twitter to raise money for our wounded heroes.

I know it is April Fool’s Day but, trust me, everything I’m about to tell you is true. Today really will be an extraordinary day.

As I write, I’m on the way from London to Salisbury Plain before breakfast for a parachute jump. Not a normal way to start the day, I’m sure you’ll agree, but this is for a very special cause.

A few weeks ago, I received a call from a truly remarkable young man called Ben Parkinson. Ben is one of the most seriously injured of our brave troops serving in Afghanistan; he is a paratrooper, who lost both legs and his voice, as well as sustaining brain damage, after a roadside bomb exploded in 2006.

Since then, he has been working for the Pilgrim Bandits charity to raise money for fellow forces amputees. Today’s jump, at the Army Parachute Association Netheravon Camp on Salisbury Plain, is its latest fund raising initiative. Very few things scare me and any trepidation I might have had at the prospect of jumping out of a plane disappeared as soon as I thought of what Ben and his colleagues have done for this country. Our servicemen are all heroes and deserve great admiration, so wish me luck today as I show my support.

 

Just because you start a successful business in one sector, doesn’t mean you will do the same thing automatically in a different one; if you don’t do the groundwork and the planning, the consequences could be calamitous.

I have often said that business is not an exact science, and of course I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way. But one thing is true beyond any doubt: all businesses planning to venture into a new marketplace should do their homework properly. That includes a thorough competitor review and full analysis of your potential customer base.

Even the most established of brands have had their setbacks. Sir Richard Branson has done a great job with the Virgin brand, which is represented successfully in a number of different sectors, but not everything touched by the name has turned to gold. Just cast your mind back to Virgin Cola.

Perhaps the drinks market was simply too far removed from Virgin’s area of expertise to succeed. When a business is aiming to branch out, having an established brand certainly helps but history proves you should stick to what you know – the Virgin brand is an outlier and most diversified companies pick markets closer to their core expertise.

 

Over the last few years, there has been plenty of risk associated with becoming an entrepreneur and setting up a business from scratch. Undoubtedly, reservations have been amplified by the severity of the credit crunch, and even the most determined entrepreneurs have been forced to consider the relative merits of a more traditional career in teaching or accountancy, for example.

Why put your livelihood on the line, you might ask, when you can train towards a career that will provide security until retirement. If you want to be a teacher, an accountant or a lawyer, that’s great – the world would be a much more difficult place without those professionals. But don’t do it just for the security or because it seems like a risk free option; the training required to become a fully fledged lawyer or accountant comes at a substantial cost and, especially in the current economic climate, doesn’t guarantee you a job for life.

There’s absolutely nothing to lose by registering a business at Companies House. In fact, you might far more easily spend thousands of pounds training for a career that never materialises. My view is that the best time to start a business is right now and every minute you spend deliberating about whether to do it now or put it off for a few more months, is a minute wasted.

The cuts announced in the spending review mean widespread job losses in the public sector but that need not deter people from setting up or growing existing businesses. In fact, entrepreneurs and small companies can draw encouragement from the review; contracts that might previously have gone to publicly funded bodies automatically are now fair game and it’s up to small and medium-sized businesses to pick up the gauntlet and prove they can provide value for money.

 

My health club company has employed thousands of people and it has never once occurred to me that there should be different pay levels for male and female staff, based purely on their gender. So I find it staggering that the Government has gone to such great lengths to uphold this basic principal in the recent Equality Act; in fact, the Act is so pedantic as to be damaging for honest employers trying to get on with the job of running the country’s businesses and boosting its economy.

No one, least of all me, wants a return to the conditions before level pay was established by the Equal Pay Act in 1970. People like Ford’s female machinists, featured in the film Made in Dagenham, worked tirelessly to bring the issue to the fore but I think even they would baulk at some of the cumbersome legislation that has just been passed.

Business leaders already have plenty of employment law to grapple with but the Equality Act will only add to the paperwork. It isn’t guided by one principle but instead has lots of clauses that will cause lots of problems for employers. Take the part on ‘Discrimination by Association’, for example; if an employee thinks that he has missed out on promotion because the boss doesn’t like his friends or family, he can sue the company. In extreme cases, the employee might even make up a story but he is still innocent until proven guilty, while the employer is guilty until proven innocent. The onus is on business leaders to disprove even the most ludicrous accusations, which is a complete waste of time and resources.

 

Boardroom discussions over the last few months have touched on the negotiations about tackling climate change that took place at the United Nations’ conference in Copenhagen.

The questions on everyone’s lips were whether there are ways to change everyday working practices within businesses to help the environment; what responsibility employers have to act; and finally, the trade off between short-term profits and long term survival.

While the necessary leadership was not shown in Copenhagen, in Britain our government has been arguing for widespread changes in business practices to address climate change. The Conservatives also seem to be on the same page. So whatever the outcome of the next general election, the party in power will continue to put pressure on employers to examine their policies.

In my view, government and businesses should be working together rather than government adopting a confrontational stance. Nevertheless, there are straightforward and cost effective measures that employers can take to make more efficient use of resources. The recession has help businesses to focus on saving money and one way to do that is by reducing their carbon footprint.

 

The Government needs to clear up some grey areas in the law before scrapping employers’ rights to retire someone when they reach 65.

A growing number of people think traditional retirement will no longer be possible in the future, according to recent research. The Government’s plans to scrap mandatory retirement at 65 will certainly enable more people to work into their late sixties and seventies, with the potential to never give up work.

However, the latest official unemployment figures showed redundancies were higher among over-50s than any other age group, and campaign groups have long argued that older workers find it much harder to re-enter the labour market once they have lost their jobs.

Making it illegal for employers to retire someone purely because of their age should help to reduce a stubborn workplace myth that all older workers are less capable or less productive, or unable to cope with change. I for one feel fitter and sharper now in my 60s than when I was much younger and I know many people are the same as me. In this age of longer life expectancy and flexible working practices, it makes sense to enable people to work into their late 60s and beyond.