It may have happened before the social media age, but Delia Smith’s rallying cry of “let’s be having you” at half time during Norwich City’s Premier League clash with Manchester City on the last day of February 2005 has sustained as a memorable viral sensation for nearly two solid decades.
The Norwich City owner took the field with a microphone after watching her side blow a two-goal lead before the break, with Antoine Sibierski and Robbie Fowler responding for the visitors following a quickfire double from Dean Ashton and Leon McKenzie.
Remember, with the greatest of respect, that this was before Manchester City were the upper-case MANCHESTER CITY of today, that Norwich were locked in a relegation battle in their first season back in the top flight for nine years, and that they had won just three times all season up to that point.
Delia Smith 'love it' message over let's be having you banter
Addressing the Carrow Road crowd, Delia implored: “A message for the best football supporters in the world: we need a twelfth man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let's be havin’ you! Come on!"
Whether it had the intended effect or not on the crowd, it was immaterial in the end: Fowler struck again in injury time to give Man City a 2-3 victory. Norwich were ultimately relegated by a single point. (Oh, alright, and a fair bit of goal difference, but let’s not let pedantry get in the way of a poetic retelling of events.)
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on the BBC's Desert Island Discs in December, Delia still sounded a bit sheepish about the whole thing, but admits she is more than happy to be remembered by rival fans for her passionate entreaty.
She explained: “I was trying to get somebody to put it on the message board – ‘come on, where are you – because they were like church mice and we were losing.” (For consistency’s sake, we will also forgive this poetic retelling of events.)
“Somebody just gave me the microphone and said ‘say it’... and I forgot, Lauren, I just forgot, that Sky were there, because you don’t know they’re there, you know what I mean? There’s always cameras anyway. And that’s what happened.
“I had letters from football supporters from one end of the country to the other. It was wonderful…[but] the first week wasn’t. The first week there were people in the press saying I should be brought before a disciplinary committee at the FA.
“I go to away matches and they all call out ‘let’s be having you, Delia’. It’s lovely, I love it.”
Reflecting on her time on the club board, Delia said: “First and foremost, it’s a beautiful game.
“It’s irritating, it’s disappointing, you have pain, you have ecstasy, it’s all those things. But I think one of the things that is so good about it now, in this day and age, is its community. It’s one of the few places where community really does thrive.”
Delia admitted that she does not know when she and husband Michael Wynn-Jones might want to step away from the club, but hopes that part-owner Mark Attanasio will eventually take the other 78% of the reins.
She said: “When it comes time for us to stand down, hopefully he’s going to be the one who’s going to take it over.
“I know that one thing’s for sure, is that souls don’t have ages, so I’m still 19…but the body does, and there might come a time when we can’t do it anymore, but at the moment that time hasn’t yet come.
“I mean, we may not be board directors, but we’ll still be going to football with our zimmer frames I think!”
That might well free up Delia to live out her ambition to take on her late mother’s charming frankness. She added: “If I could have anything I wanted, I would want her ability to sort of attract people…she attracted people like bees around a honeypot, and all the players really loved her.
“She’d walk down Carrow Road and bump into a player and say ‘you were rubbish today!’. And the player just burst out laughing!
“When she died, they all collected and bought me a tree with yellow flowers on it, and a plaque, to say ‘from the footballers and the class of whatever year it was’. Great lady.”
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