Football
Smith has developed other business interests outside of her culinary ventures, notably a majority shareholding in the recently promoted Premier League team Norwich City Football Club, with her Welsh-born husband, Michael Wynn-Jones with whom she lives near Stowmarket in Suffolk. Both Smith and Wynn-Jones were season ticket holders at Norwich and were invited to invest in the club, which had fallen on hard times.
On 28 February 2005, Smith attracted attention during the half-time break of a home match against Manchester City. At the time Norwich were fighting an ultimately unsuccessful battle against relegation from the Premier League, and in order to rally the crowd, Smith grabbed the microphone from the club announcer on the pitch and said: "A message for the best football supporters in the world: we need a 12th man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let's be 'avin' you! Come on!" Norwich lost the match 3–2. Smith denied suggestions in the media that she had been drunk while delivering the speech.
In 2008, Smith was reported to have rejected an offer from Norfolk-born billionaire Peter Cullum, who wished to invest £20 million in the club, but wished Smith and the other shareholders to relinquish their holdings. At a Norwich City AGM in November of that year, however, Smith said that she and her husband Michael Wynn Jones would 'be very happy to stand aside' as majority shareholders if someone came along with an offer to buy them out. Delia also stated that she was never made an offer for her majority shareholding by Peter Cullum.
Cullum confirmed Smith's version of events: "Peter Cullum subsequently confirmed that he did not offer to buy the shares of the majority shareholders. He explained the £20m he offered would have been in return for new shares and that money would have been used to buy players, but he had never offered to buy out the majority shareholders."
In August 2011, Smith announced that, anticipating her 70th birthday, she was stepping down from her catering role at Carrow Road: "It is now time for a fresh approach and a younger team who, I am confident, will take the business even further."
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Famous quotes containing the word football:
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“... in the minds of search committees there is the lingering question: Can she manage the football coach?”
—Donna E. Shalala (b. 1941)