Kingfisher chief executive Ian Cheshire was fielding a lot of questions about the weather last week after reporting a dip in profits for the first time in five years.

Retailers usually like to bang on about the weather, but to be fair to Cheshire the wettest April in 100 years in 2012 did ruin the retailer’s biggest selling period across Europe. Cheshire pointed out that one of B&Q’s best-selling paint ranges of the year was called, optimistically it turns out, Light Rain. We weren’t sure if he was joking about the product team working on a shade called Deep Snow to get a closer match to this year’s spring weather.