Delia Smith has revealed she booed Chelsea fans when they chanted Roman Abramovich ’s name at Carrow Road. And the Norwich owner praised her own supporters for singing: ‘Where’s your dirty money gone?”.
Chelsea won 3-1 at Carrow Road on Thursday night just hours after the UK government froze the assets of the West London club’s Russian owner for being a “pro-Kremlin oligarch”.
Chelsea fans sung Abramovich’s name during a minute’s applause in solidarity with Ukraine war at Burnley last Saturday. And the travelling support again chanted his name in Norfolk.
Smith told BBC Radio Four: “I was with our crowd and we were all booing at the top of our heads, including me when they mentioned. They had a lovely little song the Norwich supporters called: ‘Where’s your dirty money gone?’
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“But it is interesting. It has been going for nearly 20 years and it has taken a war for it to really come up to the surface.”
TV chef Smith and her husband Michael Wynne-Jones have been the majority shareholders at Norwich City since 1996 and have seen a massive change in English football since.
“Abramovich was the prime mover in the financial takeover of football,” she said. “It has not done football a lot of good really. If you have multi-million pound players not even playing in the game but sitting on the bench and you have clubs like ours who are self-funding, sports kind of goes out of the window a little bit. It is so unfair.”
Smith has just published a new book called You Matter: The Human Solution about “belief in human life”. She explained: “It is an attempt to make people aware of the deeper things going on in our deeper human existence that we are not always quite in touch with.”
And Smith, now 80, takes this philosophical view to Norwich this season who sit rock bottom of the Premier League.
Asked if she ever considers selling up in despair, Smith said: “No I don’t. We have to always remember that it is called sport and sport happens like that. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and that is how it goes. It is certainly a rollercoaster with more joy than pain I would say.”
It is not the first time Smith has attracted attention for her behaviour at Carrow Road. In 2005, she took to the pitch at half-time during a match against Manchester City and urged home fans: "Let's be 'avin' you! Come on!"
