The film rights to The Rise and Fall of Chris Ronnie may now be worth a good deal more than his 30 per cent stake in JJB Sports.

Mr Ronnie’s role was under scrutiny from the moment he took the job in August. After his appointment, he and Exista, the Icelandic fund with whom he purchased the shares, were forced to write to shareholders assuring them that he was not a puppet boss installed by Mike Ashley, the maverick tycoon who controls Sports Direct and owns Newcastle United Football Club.

Mr Ronnie had worked for Mr Ashley at Sports Direct for three years and the pair had joked of their encounters on the squash court.

The fortunes of Mr Ronnie – and JJB – took a turn for the worse in September when the company was accused of breaching its banking covenants by HBOS, one of its lenders – a claim that it denied. The spat prompted JJB’s auditors to issue a going-concern warning, which in turn alarmed credit insurers, which cut its cover. Mr Ronnie said that HBOS was simply trying to “get an advantage” over JJB, joking: “Little Red Riding Hood springs to mind.”

However, it didn’t stop the shares’ slide. On the morning of that announcement in September they opened at 104p – less than half the value on the day Mr Ronnie took charge. The stock had dropped to 3p by the time the board appointed Sir David Jones as executive chairman this month.

Concerns over its banking facilities had mounted and the appointment of Sir David, who successfully steered Next from the brink of collapse to a giant of fashion retail, bought the sportswear retailer extra time from the banks.

JJB is not the first company whose shares have been sold because of a margin call resulting from the Icelandic collapse. But it is likely that the sheer murkiness of the sportswear industry, with its incestuous network of cross-shareholdings, meant that this was an accident waiting to happen.

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