City's joint majority shareholder Delia Smith today re-affirmed her long-standing pledge to only ever leave the Canaries to one of Norfolk's own – and if opinion were ever divided, she might even put it to the Carrow Road vote.
To coincide with the launch of her latest cookbook – 'How To Cheat At Cooking' – the club's celebrity owner was in full PR-overdrive today as she first appeared on Simon Mayo's Radio Five Live show before heading to the TV studios and a place on the sofa next to Adrian Childs on 'The One Show' this evening.
After a half-hour devoted to all things cookery – the original version of 'How To Cheat At Cooking' was actually Delia's first ever cook book published some 30 years ago – Mayo turned his attention for the last ten minutes of his show to her other all-consuming passion, Norwich City Football Club.
Well-versed by his researchers in the roller-coaster ride of a season that is still unfolding, the Daily Mayo host quizzed Delia as to whether she was in it for the long term; whether being rock-bottom of the Championship had taken its toll; whether her appetite for the fight had waned.
She had, after all, made a passionate: 'Show me the money!' speech at a particularly fraught annual general meeting last autumn when then caretaker boss Jim Duffy stood in for the just-departed Peter Grant and supporters openly questioned whether she and her husband, Michael Wynn Jones, had served their term and their purpose.
That the time was now nigh for fresh ideas, fresh faces and , above all, fresh money to first drag Norwich back from the brink of relegation and then secure their place in the top flight.
Three months later, of course, and the world is a wholly different place as new boss Glenn Roeder drives the reborn Canaries on towards a possible play-off finish on the back of that 13-game unbeaten run.
And while the Turners, Andrew and Sharon, may have joined the board, there was no immediate sign of the fresh money many craved – or at least, not over and above the ?2 million 'loan' that the Central Trust couple first put on the table.
Hence the question lingered; that as Norwich City's value as a football club grew with every point and place they gained nearer to the promised land of the Premiership, were Delia and Michael still in it for the long haul? And what if a Marcus Evans or a Randy Lerner emerged with their cheque book at the ready?
“Definitely, definitely,” she said in answer to the 'long-term' question, before introducung a 'but' to their gentle conversation. A potentially big 'but' the closer Norwich climb to the Premiership.
“But I have to face up to the reality that is somebody comes a long and says: 'I will put ?20 million into Norwich City Football Club – on the playing side; not just on the day-to-day scrabbling to survive – I think the supporters would not forgive me if I turned it down. Or if Michael and I turned it down,” she told Mayo.
“That's where I am. And if people don't come along and offer that kind of money – or if the wrong person came and offered it then, no, I'd prefer not to; I'd prefer to still be there.”
Mayo's next question returned to an old chestnut – just who would pass the 'fit and proper person' test in Delia's eyes? What kind of individual will be their heirs, as and when the day comes for the baton to be passed on?
It has, after all, been 12 long and often lonely years since the couple became joint-majority shareholders in the wake of Robert Chase's bitter exit.
“When you look at what's happened to other football clubs that have been taken over by other people who are not necessarily football supporters, there's been a lot of things that have gone wrong,” she said.
“Grounds have been sold to build flats; all kinds of weird things. I think if you are going to let your precious football club go into the hands of somebody, it has to be the right person.”
Again, the club's majority shareholder insisted she would be a reluctant seller to anyone of a foreign ilk; that the Glazers, the Lerners and the Hicks' of this world would have to look elsewhere.
“How could they be passionate about English football and Norwich City in particular if they were (foreign)?” she asked.
“So I'd prefer it not to be. I'd prefer it to be a local person.”
But if there was a groundswell of opinion that backed someone else stepping in? Of buying the Smiths and Jones' out and allowing them to return to their season tickets in the City Stand?
“If there was something contentious I think what I'd have to do is run out onto the pitch and let everybody vote.
“We did have a vote once,” she added, recalling the days of Bruce Oldfield's all-yellow kit collection.
“When I first became a board director we went into yellow shorts and yellow tops and the supporters didn't like it and they complained. And we did have a vote.
“We did have: 'Hold up a yellow card if you want them yellow… Hold up a green card if you want the green back….' And the green won – I lost the vote. And we went back to green and yellow.”
The fact remained, she insisted, that true financial stability lay only in the realms of the Premiership; for as long as you are out of the land of milk and honey, it remains a fraught process making the sums add up. Of making Ambition and Prudence mix.
“If we want to be really, really realistic now, the Premiership is probably the only way to have financial stability,” she said.
“Because all the clubs that are not in the Premiership, struggle. And struggle. It's no longer a case of being a millionaire – you've got to be a billionaire now to finance football.
“And that's the only way that you can be financially secure – by being in the Premiership.”
To her credit, she also insisted that she and Michael would not have backed the '39th game' proposal that may, one day, find Norwich City playing the role of 'the opposition' to an Arsenal or a Manchester United in some far-flung corner of the footballing globe.
“All I ever hear from the Premiership is that they've got too many games; that they come on television and moan the whole time that they've got too many games, so why they want another one I don't know.
“And when we did have a year in the Premiership and we went to the Premier League meetings and Michael and I had a vote – and if I'd have been there this time, I would have voted against it.
“I don't think they need more money; they're awash with money. And it just rolls in all the time. I think they just want to make a bit more,” she said.
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