Gary Newbon: My loyalties are clear – and my love for the Foxes will never quit

People always ask me: who do you really support? The answer which surprises most people is Leicester City. A strange choice for a Cambridge boy who has watched the Foxes since 1951.

My grandfather, who lived 600 yards from the old ground at Filbert Street, had five daughters – my mother being the second – and I was the first grandson so my father first took me, when I was six, to stay with Grandad to go to football.

I tried to stay impartial during 33 years on Midlands TV. All the TV stations follow the successful teams. Aston Villa won the League, League Cup and European Cup during my time, Derby won the League title twice and Nottingham Forest back-to-back European Cups, one League title and four League Cups.

Birmingham fans regularly told me to ‘xxxx off to the Villa’… Villa supporters sometimes told me to “xxxx off’ to Derby or Forest.

Even recently, I have had to convince a neighbour and well-known Blues supporter Keith Batchelor that I like Villa but do not support them.

Leicester have known for a long time about my affection for them. When I was getting married back in 1973, the Foxes manager Jimmy Bloomfield and his board presented me with a silver tray.

I have been a regular guest in the boardroom ever since.

I came out (to use the modern term) when the Sunday Express a few years ago asked me to be that particular week’s ‘celebrity reporter’.

The game was Sheffield Wednesday 2 Leicester 0. They paid me a handsome fee and there was an end-of-season ‘celebrity reporter’ luncheon in the wonderful Dorchester Hotel in London’s Park Lane.

When I used to talk with West Midlands schoolchildren as part of my work with the West Bromwich Building Society, the pupils used to ask me who I supported (after they told me their teams – Villa, Wolves, the Baggies and so on). They regularly groaned when I replied Leicester City!

Recently, I had to name my greatest Leicester team for the excellent retro football magazine BACKPASS.

What a tough job that proved to be.

Dream team: Kasper Schmeichel, Graham Cross, Steve Walsh, David Nish, Riyad Mahrez, N’Golo Kante, Youri Tielemans, David Gibson, Gary Lineker, Jamie Vardy, Len Glover. Substitutes: Peter Shilton, Steve Whitworth, Wes Morgan, Arthur Rowley, Frank Worthington, Mike Stringfellow.

Goalkeeper was the most difficult choice with two greats, Gordon Banks and Peter Shilton. But Schmeichel was there for the only time Leicester have won the top division (Premier League) in 2016 and the FA Cup in 2021.

Supporting Leicester has been tough – particularly in my schooldays when the Foxes were known as the yo-yo team because they were up and down from the old Division One to Division Two (now the Premier League and the Championship).

But since the Srivaddhanaprabha family from Thailand took ownership, the glory days really came until the season that has just finished.

Vichai was chairman for the Premier League triumph before being tragically killed when his post-match helicopter crashed outside the stadium on October 17, 2018. There is a statute of Vichai at the ground.

His son Aiyawatt (known as ‘Top’) took over and Leicester won the FA Cup in 2021.

Sadly, they have just been relegated from the Premier League – a record 12th time, equal from the top division with Birmingham City.

I had my heroes in my early years. The likes of Jack Froggatt and Johnny Morris, goalscorer Arthur Rowley (still the highest league scorer in a season with 44 goals in 1957) and captain Johnny Newman who first became a great friend when he played and managed Exeter City while I was a young ITV presenter at Westward TV in 1968.

John is still alive – indeed, the only member from the 1956 FA Cup runner-up Birmingham City side. He was 22 then and is now 89, living in Derby where he once managed the Rams.

Johnny played for the Blues from 1951-57 and Leicester from 1957 -60.

Do not get me wrong. It was a pleasure covering all the Midlands teams and, despite some viewers’ opinions, I want them all to do well.

But all football followers have a team and you stick by them through thick and thin.

Right now at Leicester, it is pretty thin with relegation, no manager yet and the best players all about to leave or be sold.

But as the Leicester sign outside the dressing room says in the tunnel: ‘Foxes Never Quit’.

Last year, my younger brother Ian died so sadly from bowel cancer aged 70. His family wanted a signed Leicester City shirt on his coffin. He, too, was a fan. The Leicester CEO Susan Whelan sent one for Ian. As everyone in football will tell you, Leicester City are a lovely club.

Next Sunday, my ups and downs with Britain’s best-ever world heavyweight boxing champ Lennox Lewis.

On Tuesday (with Utilita Energy) my column in the Birmingham Mail and Coventry Telegraph will put the spotlight on Birmingham City manager John Eustace.