Michael Wynn-Jones, Norwich City honorary president, dies at 85

Michael Wynn-Jones, the former journalist and honorary life president of Norwich City Football Club, has died aged 85, the club said. Norwich City said Wynn-Jones died peacefully at home on Monday morning. His family thanked the community nursing team at St Elizabeth hospice in Ipswich and asked for privacy.

Wynn-Jones was married to television chef Delia Smith for more than 50 years. The couple lived near Stowmarket in Suffolk and jointly oversaw several Norwich promotions to the Premier League, helping establish the club on a solid financial footing. Smith had the more prominent public role at Norwich, but Wynn-Jones was regarded as a trusted adviser and influential figure in the boardroom.

Former Norwich player Darren Huckerby said Wynn-Jones had stayed out of the limelight but that people at the club owed him a great deal. Wynn-Jones worked as a journalist for the Daily Mirror and the Spectator before founding his own publishing company. He first attended a Norwich match in April 1955, when he was 13, and later wrote about the club’s run to the FA Cup semi-final in 1959.

The Norwich City Fans Social Club described him as a club legend and said his contribution could not be underestimated. Norwich City sent condolences to Smith, the couple’s nephew Tom and Wynn-Jones’s wider family, friends and loved ones. Smith previously said the couple shared a passion for food and football.

In 2021, she told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that Wynn-Jones usually cooked at home while she went to the end of the garden.