{"id":17721,"date":"2026-07-15T20:25:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T20:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=17721"},"modified":"2026-07-15T20:25:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T20:25:36","slug":"fizz-and-chips-with-chelseas-ken-bates-chelsea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=17721","title":{"rendered":"Fizz and chips with Chelsea\u2019s Ken Bates | Chelsea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">On my parents\u2019 60th wedding anniversary in 1999, we celebrated at one of the restaurants at Chelsea\u2019s stadium, Stamford Bridge. On being told this, the club\u2019s chairman, Ken Bates \u2013 who died last weekend \u2013 and his partner came down from their flat and bought pink champagne for all of us. Ken asked one of the great-grandchildren for a chip. The child, Matthew, said no, but when offered \u00a31 for it, agreed to the transaction. Ken then wrote a promissory note on a napkin to guarantee him a position in Chelsea\u2019s finance department.<br \/><strong>Colin Sweeney<\/strong><br \/><em>London<\/em><\/p>\n<footer class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\"><strong><em><span data-dcr-style=\"bullet\"\/>  Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>email<\/em><\/strong><strong><em> <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>letters<\/em><\/strong><strong><em>  section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/footer>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On my parents\u2019 60th wedding anniversary in 1999, we celebrated at one of the restaurants&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}