Dragons Den star Duncan Bannatyne has admitted he is having to lay off staff to pay for his acrimonious divorce from second wife, Joanne.
The North East-based businessman made the revelation on Twitter when one of his followers asked if he could reopen a local shop in his village of Norton, near Stockton-on-Tees.
Bannatyne tweeted back:
Bannatyne also revealed via Twitter that he had just found out that his second marriage had been legally ended, saying: "I just received my Decree Absolute by email, isn't that nice?"
One of his four children from his first marriage, Jenny, was quick to give her backing to her father:
The couple met when Joanne was the director of his Quality Care Home business in the 1990s. They married in 2006 and had two children together.
Divorce proceedings last year hit the entrepreneur hard, even admitting he was suffering from severe depression: "My day could not have been worse. Suicide is considered an option."
Bannatyne tried to reassure employees last year that their jobs would not be at risk because of the split, but that situation at the Bannatyne Group now looks to have changed although the business insisted that it was not all doom and gloom.
A spokesperson for the Group told The Huffington Post UK: “A handful of redundancies were confined to the new projects team as Duncan consolidates the business in line with the cost of the divorce and market conditions.
"However, investment continues in order to grow established business streams and key performance areas including the call centre operation in Darlington.”