Our good friend and columnist Lord Kirkham is trying to sell DFS and yesterday’s Sunday Times reported that John Lovering had joined forces with Permira for a £500m bid for the company. I haven’t quite got to the bottom of why buying it for £500m would trigger a big windfall for Kirkham, as that’s pretty much exactly what he paid for it when he took it private in 2004, but there must be an explanation - we’ll try to find out this week.