ITV flogs Friends Reunited for £25 million

NEVER LET IT BE SAID that the INQ doesn't come clean when we get something wrong.

Last week we said struggling UK broadcaster ITV was about to sell fading social notworking site Friends Reunited to Oakley Capital for £15 million, despite having paid £120 million for it in 2007, with the broadcaster's chairman Michael Grade describing the site as "one of the most important bits of ITV going forward."

Readers may have construed our report as gloating over the many millions ITV had flushed down Friends' online toilet bowl.

We were wrong. Today, ITV announced that it is selling Friends Reunited for £25 million. Please knock £10 million off our gloating. The deal was the highlight of ITV's half year results which also featured a £105 million loss.

Friends is being acquired by Scottish publisher DC Thomson, which intends to create a genealogy supersite by merging it with Genes Reunited and Findmypast.com, which include the official 1901 and 1911 UK Census websites run in association with the National Archives.

The UK regulatory authorities still need to give their stamp of approval to the deal.

DC Thomson publishes a number of UK regional newspapers and children's titles including the Dandy and Beano comics, the latter featuring infamous school bully Dennis the Menace.

Perhaps now ex-schoolmates of Dennis will have an opportunity to look up their erstwhile torturer and pay him a visit. Dennis first appeared in the Beano in 1951. He should be in his 60s by now. µ