Delia Interview in FT Still unsure about MA

[BroadstairsR 2,171]

Difficult to define:

TRY this

:A community is a group of people who share something in common. You can define a community by the shared attributes of the people in it and/or by the strength of the connections among them. You need a bunch of people who are alike in some way, who feel some sense of belonging or interpersonal connection.

Pretty meaningless in as much as it could equally mean all football clubs or none if it is used in the wider encompassing way many football clubs claim they can/

Edited July 14, 2023 by BroadstairsR

[Terminally Yellow 2,448]

As much as I do think the time is right that the majority ownership of the club is passed on to someone  with new fresh ideas, I cannot bear to think of this club without the influence of Delia somewhere within it. She and MWJ have absolutely made mistakes, have not made decisions as quickly as I would have liked and - yes - being paupers in an industry usually consisting of multi millionaire and increasingly billionaires is frustrating as hell sometimes, but her commitment to the community of Norwich City and her understanding of the club as a pillar of Norfolk is second to none. She is the perfect owner in that regard and I would hate for that voice, that influence towards making this club about being there for the people of Norwich, Norfolk and beyond to disappear altogether. 

Edited July 14, 2023 by Terminally Yellow

[essex canary 496]

8 minutes ago, Robert N. LiM said:

Just a little cautionary tale for those who assume that D&M selling the club will lead inevitably to glorious success after having held us back for so long

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/jul/14/reading-mess-men-women-relegated-squad-part-time

Did we beat them last season with their severe financial restrictions and us flush with cash?

[Creedence Clearwater Couto 1,273]

57 minutes ago, hogesar said:

Fans can't be trusted, we know they'd have sold out to both Fernandes and Cullum if this forum is anything to go by...

If they both offered tomorrow, it would be a sell from me.

[Soldier on 160]

1 hour ago, rock bus said:

Doesn’t sound very hopeful does it,

I’ve a lot of respect for what delia has done for the club over the years but if we are to progress then we really need new owners. It’s not just about the amount of money they can invest (but that is crucial) but also the way the club needs to be run.

She needs to go soon with her reputation intact and not hang on damaging both her legacy and the club

She really doesn’t want to ever let go does she ??

[Jason Shackell’s Limp Tack 75]

2 hours ago, Google Bot said:

Interesting to see how reluctant to retire she is, I presumed they wanted out but clearly read that wrong. 

I wish she wouldn't use the phrase "Can't not do anything" though, as it reads wrong, but is in fact correct... Which bothers me for some reason.

Better than "I hint dun nuffun". 

[komakino 272]

18 minutes ago, Terminally Yellow said:

As much as I do think the time is right that the majority ownership of the club is passed on to someone  with new fresh ideas, I cannot bear to think of this club without the influence of Delia somewhere within it. She and MWJ have absolutely made mistakes, have not made decisions as quickly as I would have liked and - yes - being paupers in an industry usually consisting of multi millionaire and increasingly billionaires is frustrating as hell sometimes, but her commitment to the community of Norwich City and her understanding of the club as a pillar of Norfolk is second to none. She is the perfect owner in that regard and I would hate for that voice, that influence towards making this club about being there for the people of Norwich, Norfolk and beyond to disappear altogether. 

She wasn’t the perfect owner in 1997 and certainly not now. Her & MWJ’s parochial view of football has held the club back and having owners that do not invest is something I would not wish on any club. 
 

Football isn’t waiting for Norwich City. While our American friends probably won’t be the answer, Delia & MJW never were. Football will never go back to how it was and neither should it. You can’t turn the clock back, but nobody told our hapless majority shareholders. 

[RobJames 881]

Full text from the FT

"Long before we meet, the Lunch with the FT recipe has been heavily tweaked. Instead, I’m joining Delia Smith — groundbreaking TV cook, bestselling author, football club owner — for dinner. We are booked in at Delia’s, the restaurant inside Carrow Road stadium, home of Norwich City Football Club. It only opens on Friday and Saturday evenings, hence the non-regulation kick-off time of 7pm. A US investor has recently bought into the club, and I’m keen to find out if a chapter of English football is about to close: one where teams are owned by wealthy local fans instead of international capital. I’m also curious to meet one of the most influential people in postwar British cuisine, someone who has masterminded tens of millions of Christmas dinners. The airy dining room is a blank-canvas space geared towards upscale prematch events. The only picture on the white walls is a large, colourful photograph of the grande dame herself looking bashful in a crowd of uniformed chefs. Soothing hotel lounge jazz is pumped in. I’m shown to our spot — a round corner table set apart from all the others. An immaculate chestnut bob appears, a smile, a handshake, and we sit. Before we really get going, Smith gives me a direction. She’s happy to talk about “whatever”, with one proviso: “Just don’t ask me how I got into cooking, please. It’s been written about a million times.”

 

Smith, now 82, has sold more than 21mn cookbooks and transformed the way people in the UK interact with food. She has been a cultural icon since the 1970s, a British amalgamation of Julia Child and Martha Stewart. At the peak of her powers, her TV shows caused nationwide shortages as viewers rushed to follow her lead. Her name was even included in the Collins English Dictionary. But that’s ancient history, and apparently not worth revisiting. I begin mentally shredding my opening set of questions. Michelle, our sommelier for the evening, arrives at our side. I suggest a glass of white wine. Smith immediately interjects, “Great, we’ll have a bottle.” We’re off to a promising start. Michelle makes a pre-emptive strike and a bottle of Picpoul is en route. The menus are handed over and Smith reaches for her spectacles. She scans the list, but of course she likes it all: the food consists entirely of her own recipes, even the Thai green curry. “We tell the chefs when they come here that if they have ideas that are better, we’re happy. But they actually quite like not having to deal with the bother of that.” I ask for a recommendation, which leads to us both ordering the potted Cromer crab to start. She’s having monkfish for main, I’ve opted for duck with cherries — a Delia classic and the restaurant’s signature dish. Here it’s aged in Himalayan salt by a clever man in Cumbria, I’m told. “We never take it off the menu because we sell so many.”

We’re given bread and some canapés — little slivers of toast, two topped with tapenade and goat’s cheese, two with finely chopped tomatoes. The number of people waiting on us has reached five or six. It will climb higher. Now East Anglian royalty, Delia Ann Smith was born in Surrey in 1941 and raised in Bexleyheath — her accent still places her on the border of London and Kent. Her father Harold was an RAF radio operator during the war and went into business with a partner in a tool shop after; her mother Etty stayed at home to look after their children. Smith describes herself as “rotten” at school, leaving at 16 with no qualifications. “I didn’t know how to spell, I didn’t know how to punctuate. But I had a lot to say.” I ask what she can tell me about her childhood in suburbia. She takes in the question, the silence slowly drifting into awkwardness. “That’s it, really,” she responds, taking a sip of wine to emphasise the full stop. The metaphorical shredder is back in action. We move on.

After school, Smith pitched up in central London at the height of the swinging ’60s, working days as a hairdresser and nights washing dishes at The Singing Chef in Paddington. There she fell in love with food, and began to learn more about it from the archives of the British Museum, sowing the seeds of what would become her trademark method of culinary education: simple, straightforward, rigid. She went on to teach a generation how to cook, first as a newspaper food writer, then on TV and via bestselling books. “People didn’t know how to cook and they needed somebody to tell them,” she says. “And I’m one of these people that when they see something wrong they want to do something about it. So I did.” My effort to squeeze a bit of the back-story has led us to the culinary desert of postwar Britain that Smith sought to irrigate. “There was an interruption of handing down cooking from mother to daughter, because there wasn’t any food. In the ’50s and ’60s we had women’s magazines not knowing much, doing things with baked beans and cornflakes.”

 

Smith doesn’t cook much herself these days. “When you’re 82, the standing is quite hard.” Her husband of 52 years, Michael Wynn-Jones, takes charge instead, although he sticks mostly to her back catalogue. She still loves food and cooking, but lost interest in foodie culture long ago. She quit TV in 2013, saying she had exhausted her supply of ideas. “When you’ve been through 20 seasons of asparagus, there’s not an awful lot left you can do with it. Know what I mean?” The split was likely mutual — viewers had switched over to watch Jamie Oliver race against the kitchen clock, or Nigella Lawson melt chocolate in a bathrobe. There is no hint of bitterness or regret at departing the stage when she did. Celebrity was never part of the appeal. She despises MasterChef, and never watches The Great British Bake Off. I ask if seeing Prue Leith and Mary Berry, contemporaries of hers, back on primetime TV makes her think about a comeback? “No! I think thank God they’re doing it.” She also finds the “poncy” approach that dominates the modern restaurant trade utterly grating. “It’s what [cookery writer] Elizabeth David called theatre on a plate. It’s not about real cooking. It’s not what I want to eat.” Smith’s recipes — including how to boil eggs and how to make toast — at times drew criticism for being patronising. But the public lapped it all up. Delia’s Complete Cookery Course is still in print more than 40 years since its first publication. “Everybody did rubbish it,” she says. “But I was doing it for the people, and that’s where I get appreciation now, every day of my life.”

 

The Delia approach feels curiously modern in an age where we are constantly learning how to do things at the press of a thumb. She chuckles when I tell her about a YouTube video explaining how to boil eggs that has 38mn views. Her own website offers plenty of similar videos as part of her free online “cookery school”, but nobody knows it’s there, she laments. The starters have arrived, two triangles of buttered brown bread and a neat little ramekin of crab buried under a haystack of cress, which Smith promptly relocates so that she can sprinkle it over each mouthful. We switch to modern food trends — does she keep on top of them? Is she experimenting with kimchi, chipotle or sriracha? “I see recipes in magazines and I don’t know what the ingredients are. Food has always been faddish, and I’ve always tried to lie low and let it go.” Of greater concern is the way younger generations are once again losing the art of cooking, she says, instead relying on takeaways and ready meals. The vilification of meat means that many people no longer appreciate great ingredients, such as a good pork chop. It brings us neatly to veganism, the current culinary macro-trend and something she feels strongly about. “Everything within me tells me that it’s wrong. If people just want to eat vegetables — and some people do — that’s fine. But don’t say you’re helping the planet, because you’re not. Full stop.” We think we’re not important, we’re just ordinary people. I think we all can do something. It’s big, big, big stuff The topic of climate change and the future of the human race provokes a change in her demeanour. She begins to open up, becoming impassioned, even mournful about the direction we are heading in. It’s not just global warming that worries her, it’s everything. The march of autocracy, rising poverty, creaking political systems.

 

She reels off lists of podcasts and documentaries that have informed her increasingly gloomy world view. “We are backsliding as a society in every respect, and it’s very distressing. We’re in a very dangerous situation. There is so much horrendous stuff going on in the world. We’re heading for extinction. I just wish someone would wake up to the seriousness of the situation.” So what’s the solution? “We need young people like you to get rid of all this old rubbish and do something new, do something different.” Delia Smith, champion of the kitchen’s rules-based order, now an eco-warrior, an iconoclast, a would-be revolutionary. “I’ve got to be careful what I say because what you write will be in the Daily Mail the next day.” Such feelings are what prompted her most recent book You Matter, a meditation on the power of the individual. “We’re waiting for something to come along — another leader, another prime minister, somebody to come and do something. But really each of us has a responsibility. What I think is sad is that we’ve had that responsibility dampened — we think we’re not important, we’re just ordinary people. I think we all can do something. It’s big, big, big stuff.”

 

The heaviness lifts as we get to work on our mains. I yield quickly when offered a glass of Pinot Noir to go with the hunk of duck laid in front of me, the slick purple sauce dotted with sour cherries. Whatever the salt man in Cumbria did has worked a treat — the skin is delicate and crisp, the meat rich and tender. It’s delicious, although the portion size is a little daunting. Smith’s monkfish looks minuscule by comparison. Our sides of potatoes and green beans will make occasional cameos. “Come on then, let’s do football,” she declares, giving the fourth wall a glancing blow. Smith and Wynn-Jones have been coming to Norwich as fans for decades. In the 1990s, with the club struggling financially, they bought shares, became directors, and ultimately took control, putting around £12mn into the club over the years. Since then it has enjoyed high and lows, including numerous fleeting spells in the Premier League, football’s richest competition.

 

She rejects the term “owner”, preferring to call herself a “caretaker” looking after a community asset. Many in football talk like this, but I suspect few mean it like she does. It’s clear that football, not food, is her true passion. She’s getting itchy about the summer break, and is desperate for the new season to get going. “When I open the newspaper, I want to know what Palace are doing, I want to know what Man City are doing. I can’t wait to read who’s going where,” she says. “I don’t want to read about golf.” Smith is part of a vanishing breed in football, an avid fan who made good and picked up the pieces of her beloved, broken club. Now English football is dominated by US billionaires, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds. Can the game she loves survive? “One thing that fascinates me about football is that it’s one of the last bastions of community. It’s something incredibly precious. Somehow I believe in it. Somehow we’ll get through. All this money, money, money, one day it’s got to pop.” she says. “Beneath it all there’s this human connection. I don’t think there’s anything else like it.” She goes on: “If you take a child to football, the one lovely thing they are going to learn is that life is not a bowl of cherries. It’s good and it’s wonderful and it’s thrilling. But it’s also painful and horrible.”

And what of her own stewardship? In September last year, Norwich broke the taboo and brought in overseas investment. Mark Attanasio, an American fund manager and owner of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, took a stake in the club and now sits on the board. Is he the heir apparent? “At the moment we don’t know. He seems like a really good guy. We have no idea what the future will bring. We just have to wait and see. What we have to do now is hand over to people we think will be good caretakers. Football is full of terrible disasters. We won’t have a disaster. We’ll do it properly.” Does this signal retirement is looming? “No, I won’t ever retire. I can’t not do anything. I can’t just sit down and wait for the six o’clock news. I believe bodies age but souls don’t. Everyone is 19 inside. I really believe that.” The menu has committed us to three courses, so when asked we take the plunge. Tongue in cheek, she asks for “Delia’s chocolate nut sundae”. I’m having berry pavlova, something my Northern Irish grandma made for us as kids. “They have a thing in France called cuisine grand-mère — that’s what I like,” says Smith. “You don’t want something sprinkled in dust and covered in foam. It’s laughable, except you’re paying a fortune for it.” I reassure her that I’ve enjoyed a meal with a starter, main and dessert, rather than London’s increasingly ubiquitous “small plates”. Just the mention of those two words — “small plates” — causes her to shudder. “Rubbish!” she blurts out between spoonfuls of slippery chocolate. We round off with a large black coffee for her, a macchiato for me. Chocolates come too. We’re offered brandies but it feels like a stretch

As we begin to wrap up, Smith says, “We’re going to make a deal . . . When we’re back in the Premier League, we’re inviting you up — you and the wife and the kids.” Then she adds with a wicked laugh: “I can’t promise when it’ll be. I might not be alive.” The bill is supposed to be on its way, but Michelle returns empty-handed. It’s been taken care of. The FT rule book has been set alight like a crêpe Suzette. “It’s nothing to do with me,” my dinner companion insists. It transpires that Wynn-Jones has been tucked away somewhere in the restaurant having his own night out and has forced the issue. The power of the individual feels all too distant now. After three hours together, we part ways with a warm handshake. “I enjoyed that. I like talking to young people,” she says. “I’m glad we didn’t have to do the whole cookery thing.” Then she glides off in search of her doting husband, and her ride home

I did try to post a direct link, no luck.

[TheBaldOne66 685]

43 minutes ago, Robert N. LiM said:

Just a little cautionary tale for those who assume that D&M selling the club will lead inevitably to glorious success after having held us back for so long

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/jul/14/reading-mess-men-women-relegated-squad-part-time

Can you find a story about the Man City success since they were sold to balance out the truth. Not all sales are bad ffs! 

[RobJames 881]

12 minutes ago, TheBaldOne66 said:

Can you find a story about the Man City success since they were sold to balance out the truth. Not all sales are bad ffs! 

No one is claiming that. Far from it. What has been pointed out is that not all ownership by foreign companies is s#good.  Not quite as you have tried to spin it.

Edited July 14, 2023 by RobJames

[TheBaldOne66 685]

11 minutes ago, RobJames said:

No one is claiming that. Far from it. What has been pointed out is that not all ownership by foreign companies is s#good.  Not quite as you have tried to spin it.

Yes I accept that BUT some foreign ownership is good so when people say it’s gonna be bad it’s not in fact a given is it?

Truth is nobody knows how it will turn out do they?

 

It would just be nice if people accepted that noone knows instead of blindly saying foreign ownership is bad

Edited July 14, 2023 by TheBaldOne66

[nutty nigel 7,537]

Just now, TheBaldOne66 said:

Yes I accept that BUT some foreign ownership is good so when people say it’s gonna be bad it’s not in fact a given is it?

Truth is nobody knows how it will turn out do they?

Never done a study but I would think it's probably 50/50 whether we do worse or better under new ownership.

[TheBaldOne66 685]

Just now, nutty nigel said:

Never done a study but I would think it's probably 50/50 whether we do worse or better under new ownership.

I agree there, I also think there is a time when owners outstay their welcome tbh, which I feel ours have done and at the age they are they should realistically leave and let a younger person take it on, but as many say it’s up to them, which it is.

 

[Terminally Yellow 2,448]

33 minutes ago, komakino said:

She wasn’t the perfect owner in 1997 and certainly not now. Her & MWJ’s parochial view of football has held the club back and having owners that do not invest is something I would not wish on any club. 
 

Football isn’t waiting for Norwich City. While our American friends probably won’t be the answer, Delia & MJW never were. Football will never go back to how it was and neither should it. You can’t turn the clock back, but nobody told our hapless majority shareholders. 

I said she was the perfect custodian of Norwich City as a community club and a Norfolk institution, glad to see you took the time to actually read the post before replying to it. 

[komakino 272]

5 minutes ago, Terminally Yellow said:

I said she was the perfect custodian of Norwich City as a community club and a Norfolk institution, glad to see you took the time to actually read the post before replying to it. 

The community club is a red herring and I don’t buy this custodian rubbish. We’re not the V&A. If the club was so perfect under her stewardship, why does the club have a reputation of late payers? 

[chicken 2,625]

2 hours ago, Danke bitte said:

I would say I’m a fairly balanced poster and supporter, but I generally a bit tired of hearing these lines trotted out about community and it’s not about the money etc when we clearly did try to spend our way last time we were in the Prem and we fkd it up. The lip service feels like smoke and mirrors about how we just can’t afford to compete at the top - I think I would feel more comfortable if they were more honest about their financial capabilities than try and spin it about “family love” blah. Also, feels a bit weird to mention not knowing what the future will hold with Attanasio - maybe I’m reading it wrong and it’s just guff though…

Net spend was pretty cack though and we still weren't in a position to put £15-20m and wages down on quality.

Some may argue we could have gone for two to three players but that isn't quite reality with that squad at the time.

[stratton canary 134]

After that news, let's hope we get off to a flying start next season then, if not it will soon turn very toxic again! 

[chicken 2,625]

To be honest, the only thing I take from this is exactly what I took from the situation a few months ago.

Were people really comvinced D&M were going to chuck in all their shares and run off with suitcases full of money? Why would they?

What does the retirement comment relate to? Being a cook? The resaurant? Being involved with the club? Still holding shares?

Another case of nothing to see here, move along. Just another piece to fill a page that sells to people to find something new.

In fact, if you ask me, if there is anything worthy of note here it is that what she seems to be saying is that they are making sure those that take over the club are worthy, Atanassio is a nice guy, so 'who knows' - in other words, they were running the rule over him and he meets their expectations. This is soft PR, D&M will probably retain a seat on the board, still be involved to some level etc.

[RobJames 881]

36 minutes ago, TheBaldOne66 said:

Yes I accept that BUT some foreign ownership is good so when people say it’s gonna be bad it’s not in fact a given is it?

Truth is nobody knows how it will turn out do they?

 

It would just be nice if people accepted that noone knows instead of blindly saying foreign ownership is bad

That was the point made by so many. Just countering this clamour to hand over the club to whoever turns up. The post was merely offering a warning with an example. No one has " blindly saying foreign ownership is bad". Unless you have evidence of that.

[komakino 272]

8 minutes ago, chicken said:

To be honest, the only thing I take from this is exactly what I took from the situation a few months ago.

Were people really comvinced D&M were going to chuck in all their shares and run off with suitcases full of money? Why would they?

What does the retirement comment relate to? Being a cook? The resaurant? Being involved with the club? Still holding shares?

Another case of nothing to see here, move along. Just another piece to fill a page that sells to people to find something new.

In fact, if you ask me, if there is anything worthy of note here it is that what she seems to be saying is that they are making sure those that take over the club are worthy, Atanassio is a nice guy, so 'who knows' - in other words, they were running the rule over him and he meets their expectations. This is soft PR, D&M will probably retain a seat on the board, still be involved to some level etc.

I basically agree with most of this, but I’m not so sure she would be comfortable with just a seat on the board as she’s always had full control - with MWJ. I’m not for one moment thinking the Atanassio’s are the long term answer, but Delia comes across as somebody who wants to know your entire life story on the first date, yet it still won’t be enough. There is no ‘right way’ of doing things here for somebody who arguably has been here far too long already. 

[RobJames 881]

27 minutes ago, komakino said:

The community club is a red herring and I don’t buy this custodian rubbish. We’re not the V&A. If the club was so perfect under her stewardship, why does the club have a reputation of late payers? 

I assume you have evidence of that. If so, please provide it, rather than have people think you are posting cheap smears.

[RobJames 881]

1 minute ago, komakino said:

I basically agree with most of this, but I’m not so sure she would be comfortable with just a seat on the board as she’s always had full control - with MWJ. I’m not for one moment thinking the Atanassio’s are the long term answer, but Delia comes across as somebody who wants to know your entire life story on the first date, yet it still won’t be enough. There is no ‘right way’ of doing things here for somebody who arguably has been here far too long already. 

Again, nonsense with no backing. Perhaps you are nota aware that D/M hold just 56% of shares. That is never enough to hold a monopolistic hold. If the other 44% were in disagreement, only the once, it would be made known. Now, unless you have something truthful to post, do run along.

[chicken 2,625]

4 minutes ago, komakino said:

I basically agree with most of this, but I’m not so sure she would be comfortable with just a seat on the board as she’s always had full control - with MWJ. I’m not for one moment thinking the Atanassio’s are the long term answer, but Delia comes across as somebody who wants to know your entire life story on the first date, yet it still won’t be enough. There is no ‘right way’ of doing things here for somebody who arguably has been here far too long already. 

This is complete opinion based upon a narrative that has very little substance and a lot of emotion. I'm not stating whether it is justified or not, but I do think it's hard to establish at least.

[Terminally Yellow 2,448]

36 minutes ago, komakino said:

The community club is a red herring and I don’t buy this custodian rubbish. We’re not the V&A. If the club was so perfect under her stewardship, why does the club have a reputation of late payers? 

Ehh?

[komakino 272]

4 minutes ago, RobJames said:

Again, nonsense with no backing. Perhaps you are nota aware that D/M hold just 56% of shares. That is never enough to hold a monopolistic hold. If the other 44% were in disagreement, only the once, it would be made known. Now, unless you have something truthful to post, do run along.

I’m fully aware of that that they own 56% of shares. Which is enough. Cast your mind back to when Chase was a minority shareholder, but got outvoted by the remaining shareholders regarding the appointment of Martin ‘O Neill, which he didn’t want. Had that had happened when he eventually became majority shareholder, Chase would have got his way and employed A.N Other. It is my personal opinion that when somebody has had their way for so long, but then no longer has the power, they would find it very difficult. 

[NFN FC 1,123]

Long live Delia! 

[Midlands Yellow 3,986]

Any other fans now beyond caring who owns and runs the club? We are a great club but from a fans perspective backward thinking and a little strange. It seems most are still happy so let’s carry on with what we feel is safe and except the status quo. 

[CANARYKING 638]

Truly depressing, League One and below here we come 

[hogesar 9,676]

2 hours ago, Creedence Clearwater Couto said:

If they both offered tomorrow, it would be a sell from me.

Cheers, point proven.

[hogesar 9,676]

48 minutes ago, chicken said:

This is complete opinion based upon a narrative that has very little substance and a lot of emotion. I'm not stating whether it is justified or not, but I do think it's hard to establish at least.

Hes a poster who was proven to have made up a lie and spout it as a fact that Delia had tried to buy Ipswich. 

That's the level of poster you're dealing with.