Brought up in the flats three minutes’ walk from Stamford Bridge, he was a regular at Chelsea games from the age of six, obliging his mother to knit him a pair of socks just like Jimmy Greaves wore. Throughout his stellar career as a scriptwriter, comedian, radio personality and, most significantly of all, delivering the voice for Dr Elephant in the children’s show Peppa Pig, he has kept going back to the Bridge. Game after game, trophy after trophy, manager after manager he has been there. Until now. Last year he gave up his season ticket.

“It’s by someone who feels and behaves like a jilted lover. It seems to me football now is in the hands of people with no agenda further than making money. And I refuse to be part of their game."

“I believe this is an existential moment for football, a real challenge about what it wants to be. New investors are looking to make it a global business, mediated through television. And Chelsea are the poster boys for where it’s gone wrong. The club is subject to a ridiculous business experiment with no understanding of what the sport is meant to be. We are none the wiser who the real owners are, who this Clearlake operation is. It is so murky. It is ludicrously out of hand.”