Why I’m backing Sir Martin Broughton’s bid for Chelsea

Sir Martin Broughton, who is leading one of the consortiums aiming to buy Chelsea Football Club, was a guest at one of Forest’s biggest and most successful events.

‘Revolt In Style’ was a gala dinner that took place at The Savoy Hotel in London on June 25, 2007. It was organised to mark the introduction of the smoking ban in England that was only six days away.

On one hand it was a demonstration of our opposition to the ban, on the other we wanted to go down all guns blazing with a ‘celebration’ of the last time we could eat, drink and smoke in an indoor public place without being arrested or prosecuted!

Organised at four weeks’ notice with the help of Boisdale MD Ranald Macdonald, the £90 a head event was attended by almost 400 people plus TV crews from twelve countries including Russia, Germany and France.

One guest, journalist Rod Liddle (former editor of the Today programme), later wrote:

Spent a wonderful valedictory evening chain-smoking at a bash organised by Forest on Monday night … There were some fine speeches – pugnacious and rabble-rousing from Anthony Worrall-Thompson; politically-loaded and sharp from Andrew Neil; counter-intuitive from the excellent Claire Fox.

Described as a ‘heavyweight British businessman’, Sir Martin was chairman of British Airways from 2004-2013.

He is also a former chairman and chief executive of British American Tobacco, a company he joined in 1971, and I still have the handwritten note he sent thanking us for organising the Savoy event which he attended as a guest of BAT, having retired from the company in 2004.

It was a small but thoughtful gesture that I greatly appreciated and for that reason alone I shall be quietly rooting for his consortium to succeed!

See also: Thanks for the memories, Roman (a supporter’s view).

Update: Reuters reports that ‘Chelsea bidder Broughton says his group has global backing ’.