Michael Wynn Jones and Mick Dennis knew each other through two primary connections: professional journalism and a shared passion for Norwich City Football Club.
The former sportswriter pays a tribute to the honorary life president of the club in a touching obituary.
He used to stand on the terraces with his dad. Then, decades later, he and his wife stood by the club when it needed them. But that whole Norwich City adventure might not have happened for Michael Wynn Jones. His life might well have gone in a different direction if his father had driven south instead of north on one Saturday in April 1955.
His father, the Reverend Edmund Wynn Jones, was a Church of England vicar who, a couple of years earlier, had been posted to two adjoining parishes in south Norfolk. One is Tivetshall. The other is Redenhall with Harleston. The two parishes span villages, hamlets and farms either side of the A140 and are pretty much equidistant from the two conurbations that road connects.
That geographic fact is significant, because it was a sliding-doors moment when the vicar decided to start taking his 13-year-old son to watch some local football and opted not to head south on the A140…
No, let’s not go there. The vicar didn’t, so Michael didn’t. Instead, they came north to Carrow Road. They climbed the earth mound to the open terraces of the River End and, as Michael recalled for the rest of his days, became frozen to the bone.
Norwich City were nearing the end of an entirely unremarkable campaign in the Third Division South. They eventually finished 12th of 24 clubs, winning 18 games and losing 18, scoring 60 goals and conceding 60. Symmetry, but bang average. Yet Michael was smitten. That was it. He was a Norwich City fan – for life.
His other great love began in 1969. By then he was an Oxford graduate and a successful writer and journalist – deputy editor of the Daily Mirror’s recently launched weekly colour magazine.
Delia Smith, then unknown, was hired by the magazine to write a weekly recipe and Michael was the man with whom she was told to liaise: another sliding-doors moment, because how else would two 27-year-olds from different backgrounds have met?
They became a couple and, within months, Michael took Delia to her first football match – an England international at Wembley – and not long afterwards they started watching games together at Carrow Road.
As we commemorate and celebrate Michael’s life – and his fandom – we should pay particular attention to how Smith and Jones rode to the rescue at a moment of profound peril for Norwich City.
We must fast-forward to 1996 – romping through years which, as Michael wrote, saw the team he cared about go from “playing Newport County in the Third Division South to playing Inter Milan in Europe”.
Three seasons after that European sortie, the club in the fine city was in a fine old mess. Under chairman Robert Chase a huge debt had accumulated and the club’s bank refused to deal with him any longer because his relationship with supporters was so toxic.
In May 1996, Chase sold his shares to former club chairman Geoffrey Watling for £700,000, but that did not put any cash into City’s coffers. The debt was still there and the bank demanded to see a credible plan and, critically, new investment. Martin Armstrong, chief executive of the Norwich and Peterborough Building Society, was seconded to the football club board to find wealthy benefactors … and he came up with the idea of approaching Delia, by then the nation’s most feted television cook and cookery book writer. She must have a few quid, and she was a season ticket holder.
Delia has said: “They actually wanted me to put up half-a-million pounds in return for a place on the board. I told them we’d give them a million for two seats on the board, so that Michael could be involved, and they said OK”.
The next big problem concerned Watling. He didn’t want a place on the board or any involvement in the day-to-day business of the club. He was 83 and, understandably, thought he’d done his bit during his previous stint as chairman. So, Delia and Michael bought his shares.
Next, to generate more money for the club, they underwrote a new, £2.6m shares issue. For legal reasons, the new shares could only be offered to existing shareholders, many of whom chose not to risk any more of their cash. That meant Delia and Michael had to buy a big wodge of those new shares and so found themselves owning a total of 63 percent of Norwich City Football Club.
That steadfastness is a quality both shared and he was in sync with her in many ways (their 55th wedding anniversary was at the start of the month of September in which he died).
But he had his own distinct attributes too. Like many an old journalist, he was a grammar pedant and (like this old journalist) found it jarring if anything he read – menus, for instance – had howlers. He was quietly pained when his wife was persuaded by some design guru or other that the posh restaurant at Carrow Road should be named delias and not Delia’s.
He was wise, witty, wry… many things, all of them good. My wife, Sarah, chose the adjective “charming” to describe him in one of our many chats about him in recent days and weeks. Not charming in any studied or calculated way – just naturally engaged and engaging, likeable, easy-going … charming.
He was modest to a fault. I tried on several occasions to talk to him about his journalism and the many books he had published, but he didn’t require or seek approval of his achievements and so didn’t feel any need to talk about them.
Just once, I remember, he referred to the fact that he had been the driving force of the publishing company he and Delia set up.
I had walked away from the best-paid job I ever had. I was 49 and not sure how I would contribute to the family income from there on. Michael phoned me and, in a long, supportive chat full of wonderful advice, he said: “I never expected to be running a publishing company in my 50s, but I did. You can turn this episode into an opportunity.” He was being a friend when I needed one.
What was Michael Wynn Jones like? That was what he was like.