Gavin Duffy feels that the opening sequence of the first series of Dragon's Den, in which he and the other four dragons cavorted in big cars, golf courses, boats and stables, was a little too ostentatious. "I think RTé, the production company and ourselves very nearly got the tone wrong the first time," he says. "And I've campaigned for a more sleeves-rolled-up thing this time around. The excuse from RTé and Shinawil [the production company] is that we were confined to the format of the franchise and the format wants to depict us as millionaires at play. I really felt it was the wrong time for that."

Now, the thing to bear in mind is that 49-year-old Duffy is saying all this from a lavish office in his beautifully decorated regency house (Kilsharvan House, County Meath), and he's saying it beneath a photo-realist oil painting of himself. In the painting he's dressed in a well-cut pinstripe suit sitting at the desk in the very same office in which we're talking and he's in quite a serious pose. Outside the painting, he's wearing a similar suit, is very personable and has a habit of contorting himself into interesting shapes on the couch. One minute, he's a reflective psychoanalysis patient, leaning his head back on the arm of the chair, the next he's leaning on his elbow, with one leg on and one leg off the couch like a teenager during the midterm break. Initially he sits at the edge of the seat and leans forward conspiratorially.

He generally seems pretty relaxed. But then, who wouldn't be, reclining beneath your own portrait, in your very own 19th century 'ladies' estate' (it was passed down through the women of the Jameson family), an estate which, as a boy, Duffy often passed but couldn't enter. "I was born in Kildare but dragged up in Drogheda," he says. "As a young fella I was very into horses and ponies, so I'd come out here to a back lane to ride ponies. We were aware of the house but we were never allowed onto the hallowed ground of the estate."

His family and extended family were restaurateurs and publicans. "They had all these restaurants and pubs called The Gem in Naas and Drogheda and Dun Laoghaire," he says. "From an early age I'd hear my parents talking about the takings of the day. It was an early education in business. Our place in Drogheda was a successful pub at a time when people sadly spent all their days in pubs. If my father ever thought I was getting above myself he'd remind me that I was educated between pool tables and a one-armed-bandit. Those were the things that generated the money for my education."

In his early teens, horse-riding was his life. He wanted to make a career of it, "but my parents felt that I was too involved with horses, so they sent me to boarding school to keep me away from it". After that, at 18, he discovered the even less respectable world of pirate radio.

He talks about the early days of broadcast piracy, his love of talk radio and how he set up Boyneside Radio, employing 30 people. "To say 'employed' might be stretching it," he says. "They weren't very well paid. I loved it, but it did give me an absolute horror of anything illegal or black market. It was always a bit frustrating. The bank wouldn't lend you money because it wasn't legitimate and successive governments never got around to legalising the situation."

He followed this with a brief stint at Carr Communications before getting a lucky break presenting 'What It Says in the Papers' on Morning Ireland. Before long he was a rising star in RTé, presenting the station's first television business show, Marketplace, filling in for Derek Davis on Live at Three, and hosting telethons alongside Gay Byrne. Then in 1989, he did a one-way George Lee, leaving the national broadcaster to jump into the newly emerging local radio scene.

"They started franchising all the radio stations in 1989," he explains. "I decided to buy the Louth/Meath franchise and set up LMFM. I was up against stiff competition in the form Mr Frank Dunlop. I had a youthful arrogance in those days. I felt that they should give me the licence on merit and that I shouldn't even have to go ask, so I didn't canvas or lobby. We got it on merit."

Did he have any regrets? "People did try to persuade me not to go," he says. "And RTé gave me a parting gift that turned out to be a bit of a curse. They let me do Holiday Ireland 1988, going around the country with Kathleen Watkins, being wined and dined in hotels and using the latest technology – a satellite microwave link – to broadcast back to the studio. A few weeks later I was doing an outside broadcast from a car park for LMFM, and was thinking 'What have I done?'"

Unlike most of the other stations licensed at that time, however, LMFM flourished. "The thing about radio is that if there's a 25% listenership you're struggling, but if you get to 40% you suddenly start getting bigger numbers, because when there's a group of friends in a pub at least two will have heard something on the station which can start a conversation which makes other people want to tune in as well. I loved local radio. We were doing real public-service broadcasting at no cost to the taxpayer. Twenty-one stations came on stream. Seven were very successful, seven were struggling and seven were basket-cases."

He lost interest and started his media-consultancy firm, he says, because he wasn't allowed purchase a second station. But there was another reason. "Orlaith [Carmody, his wife] came to join us in LMFM and I was madly in love with her. She left and went to Century and from there to RTé and had a spectacular career there. I kind of followed her to Dublin and we were married in '93. Personally, I don't like playing up the romantic side, because we have all the stresses of raising children that everyone else suffers, but we're very much on a wavelength about businesses."

In Dublin he set up Media Training, for whom Orlaith also became a director. "We managed crises. Marketing people are good at selling their products and PR people are good at arranging events and launches. Businesses turn to us when there's a crisis. I don't think there's been a major story or scandal since 1992 that I haven't been involved with in some way." Which ones? "You think of every big scandal and I've had a side in it," he says. "But here's the interesting thing, and most journalists don't print this, but in my years of business I've seen very little genuine corruption. There were colourful incidents and human drama, like Ben Dunne in Florida with escorts. But corruption? I've seen very little of that."

Define corruption. "Corruption is doing something that is outside the law, outside anyone's sensible moral compass and that involves putting profit ahead of doing the right thing. Genuinely I've never really seen it." What about planning fiascos? "Okay, Frank Dunlop has gone to jail for corrupting politicians," he says. "So obviously there has been corruption there. And it stands to reason there's more we don't know about. But that's a systemic problem. There were people working in local authorities, overworked and underpaid in the middle of a housing boom, and by drawing a line down a map they could create millionaires on one side of a line but not on the other. There will be corruption when you have a system like that."

Duffy has significant property interests, himself. Did he see the crash coming? He shakes his head. "I'll tell you how late I saw the crash coming," he says. "It was 2.30 in the morning on the eighth of the eighth, 2008." He recounts how on that date he was staying over at the Berkeley Court Hotel with some guests for The Dublin Horse Show. He was admiring the hotel's business model, he says, when it occurred to him that "someone [Seán Dunne] had decided that this cash-generating business should be knocked to the ground to build apartments." He realised there and then, he says, "that it was all going to crash".

He adds that he was involved in the less speculative end of the property business and so hasn't been significantly affected. I ask him if Dragon's Den and the spirited entrepreneurialism it encourages are part of our national recovery. "Well, I think it's genuinely very entertaining television," he says. "And I can't believe the excitement and sheer buzz I've had, not so much from the television part, but from what's happened with my four investments since. You end up investing in things you'd never have looked at in the real world. One which turned out to be brilliant for me was a thing called Henparty.ie. That's now generating large revenue every week selling chocolate willies, learner plates and devil's horns and we're now launching Hen Party UK based on the same model. I gather that I'm more involved with my investments than my fellow dragons."

Does he get on well with the others? "Before I did the show I'd hear rumours about the UK version of the show and who got on with who, and I've since learned that that's a load of poppycock. Who you're going to be friendly with on the programme is determined by who you're sitting beside. In my view the best businessperson on the show is Bobby Kerr, but I'll never do a deal with Bobby. Do you know why? Because I can't f***ing see him. I can't give him a nod or a wink. But I can catch Niall [O'Farrell] a little bit and I'm right next to Sean [Gallagher], so I'm more likely to do deals with them."

He also says he's learned about himself from the show. "Take Sarah [Newman]," he says. "She's an acquirer rather than an investor. She makes offers but she looks for a big stake. I'm more a gambler and a punter. In the coming series I invest in a few things that nobody in their right mind would invest in. I invested in one guy because I thought it'd be a bit of craic."

He does seem very hands on. He goes into enthusiastic detail about production schedules for products and the psychology of the entrepreneurs. When I'm leaving he loads me up with samples of Takker (a picture-hanging device) and Animatazz (a play-dough animation kit recently featured on the Late Late toy show) from the boot of his car.

Out in front of the house the view is lovely. There's an old converted mill (available for weddings and conferences) around the back and there are working stables. He recalls how after an idyllic period living on Ailesbury Road in Dublin, in 1998 he uprooted his city-born wife and four children (now aged 12 to 16) to move out to Meath where he could indulge his thwarted horse-riding ambitions. "Before doing Dragon's Den, I'd ride at five in the morning and then again at eight at night. I love horses – the feel of them; the smell of them. It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't ride."

Nowadays, an insurance clause of Dragon's Den restricts Duffy's horse-riding, which is ironic given the opening sequence presents him on horseback. "They did shoot a new opening and they got all this footage of me working," he says. "But then they said they wanted to use the horse bit again for an action shot." He sighs. "So I'm a little worried we're going to look like fat cats again."

Dragon's Den, RTé One, Thursday, at 10.15pm