Dashwood: Pets at home hounded over plans to move into Prince Charles' garden centre

However, a source close to the company told Dashwood that, if the takeover does go ahead, the Pets at Home outlet would be a different format to its usual out-of-town retail park setting, “in keeping with its environment”. “There would not be a car-park,” says the source.

The plot thickens, meanwhile, because Amy Stirling, the finance chief at The Prince’s Trust, is also an independent non-executive director of Pets at Home, sowing the seeds of a possible conflict of interest.

Perhaps wisely, therefore, Stirling has erected some robust fences between her two roles, as the garden centre prepares to close its doors on August 31 before re-opening under new management. “Amy has stepped back from the sale negotiations,” says my mole.

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The changing of the guard on the top shelves of Sainsbury’s, after Justin King checked out as CEO last month, has ushered in a less buttoned-up regime under new boss Mike Coupe.

Dashwood hears from a top-drawer boardroom source that Coupe, himself no fan of wearing a tie, decreed there should no longer be a dress-code at the grocer's HQ in Holborn, central London.

Unfortunately, however, some employees have taken their office dress-down looks too far. In recent weeks, some have turned up in ripped jeans and – the sartorial horror – flip-flops, meaning minimum standards of office-dress have had to be reinstated.

Whatever would the grocer’s grandly attired life president, Lord Sainsbury, say?

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Andrew Monk, the serial stockbroker behind Blue Oar and Oriel Securities, has been developing a strong backhand.

Between tipping natural resources stocks at his current home, VSA Capital, Monk has become the UK amateur mixed-doubles champion of a sport called Racketlon.

For those yet to encounter this unusual past-time, it’s a triathlon-style event involving table tennis, badminton, squash and tennis.

The next step for Monk and his doubles partner, Alice Shimmin, is the Racketlon World Championships, which takes place at the Surrey Sports Park from Thursday.

“VSA now stands for ‘Very Sporty Andrew’,” says Monk, who was inspired to take up the sport by Bob Parker, the head of equity dealing at Hendersons. What a racket.

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Dan Wagner, the internet entrepreneur once blamed for wiping 10p off a dotcom company’s share price by wearing a Donald Duck waistcoat to a pre-IPO photocall, famously said: “Maybe I’m not the best person to run a public company.”

Given that Mr Wagner scrapped his float of e-commerce business Venda earlier this year, while the planned IPO of mobile outfit Powa Technologies is still in “early days”, Dashwood sees his point.

On Tuesday, however, he’s giving listed life yet another shot with the IPO of a “freestyle merchandising platform” called Attraqt.

Will it be third time lucky?

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harriet.dennys@telegraph.co.uk

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