The Dragons’ Den and former Strictly Come Dancing star is ambarking on a new solo project
Nicola Methven TV Editor and Karen Price Assistant Editor of Screen Time
14:09, 05 Jan 2026
Sara Davies has landed a new role with ITV(Image: PA)
One Dragons’ Den star is poised to embark on a massive solo venture and has admitted that it is “a big risk”.
On the BBC programme where substantial sums are on the line, Sara Davies maintains her composure with characteristic warmth, offering supportive smiles and uplifting remarks to hopeful entrepreneurs.
When ITV’s new daytime quiz Time is Money – which starts on Monday, January 5 – required a presenter, bosses recognised she’d be the ideal candidate.
The 41-year-old revealed to the Mirror. that accepting the role was a no-brainer. “It’s not like presenting a quiz was on my big life agenda, but what I’ve learned about myself over the last five years or so is that I just love doing TV,” she chuckled.
“And I like doing TV with other people because I think I’ve got quite a lot of natural warmth and empathy.”
Sara admits ITV are taking ‘a big risk’(Image: ITV)
She continued: “So when they came to me and said, ‘ITV would really love you to work on this quiz with us,’ I was like, ‘Wow, that came out of the left field’. Normally, when you’re launching a new quiz, you would want to go with a presenter who’s a tried and tested professional at these sort of things. So I felt so humbled and honoured that they were prepared to take a chance on me.
“That’s a big risk for them, which just drove me even more because I don’t do anything half-heartedly. If I’m in something, I’m really in it.”
Another reason producers wanted Sara was her warm nature, which helps contestants feel comfortable. “I realised quite early on that if I could make them feel relaxed then they enjoy the process more,” she explains.
“I tried to forge a genuine connection really quickly with all of the players and I felt like I was rooting for them.”
She explained that whilst posing the questions required her to be “quite straight” – she was still cheering them on from her position in the studio. “I can have the warmth in my face and I think they feel that and then they get really excited about the game.”
Sara on the set of Time Is Money(Image: ITV)
The mother-of-two remains grounded enough to understand that the programme centres on the participants rather than herself. “I guess I came into it wanting to be what the quiz needed me to be,” she reveals.
“They wanted my personality, but it wasn’t about me. It was about delivering the show really well. I’m hoping when people watch it, they realise that I feel really natural with this and I love doing it, but I never made it about me.”
ITV is bolstering its daytime quiz empire – already home to The Chase, Tipping Point, Deal or No Deal and Lingo – with this fresh addition, launching daily from 3pm.
The clever twist sees contestants start with their prize money already sitting pretty on the table – but they must race against time to hang onto it.
Get it wrong and they can only watch helplessly as their cash vanishes into thin air, meaning fortunes can change from riches to rags – or the other way round – in a heartbeat.
**For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new **Everything Gossip** website**
So how did Sara, mum to sons Oliver, 12, and nine-year-old Charlie with husband Simon, squeeze it into her jam-packed diary?
She deployed the exact same strategy she used when taking on Strictly Come Dancing in 2021.
“I learned to de-compartmentalise when I did Strictly,” she reveals.
“There’s that age-old saying, ‘If you want a job doing, give it to a busy woman’. And when I did Strictly, I could only rehearse for six hours a day from 6am to midday.
“I learned that I had to give them all of me in those six hours, and I couldn’t be doing other things, I couldn’t be physically present in body and not be present in mind. I can’t give any one thing in my life as much time as I’d like to give it, because I just try and cram too much in. So what I do is I give 100% of me in the moment.
“So that’s what I did here. I had to take eight days out of my schedule to film that quiz show, but in that time they got all of me. That’s how I can make something successful.”
Naturally, the role brought its fair share of hurdles, particularly her unmistakable north-east accent. “It can be quite challenging when it comes to pronouncing Shakespearean characters and European footballers,” she chuckles.
Sara with her Dragons’ Den co-stars(Image: BBC/Simon Pantling)
“I used to come in at silly o’clock in the morning and spend hours just practicing the pronunciation of some of the words with the questions team so that I didn’t let anybody down on the set.”
After shooting the programme over Easter with a crew that’s incredibly seasoned in quiz show production, Sara is crossing her fingers that audiences will adore watching it as much as she relished creating it. “Going into there as somebody who wasn’t a professional quiz presenter, I felt like I needed to lift myself up to their level to justify having a seat at that table,” she confesses.
“But that’s when you get the biggest satisfaction, isn’t it? When you push yourself out your comfort zone, you try something new and then you excel at it,” she grins. “By the time we got to record episode 25, I felt like a quizzing expert.”
Time is Money, ITV/ITVX weekdays at 3pm.
