Byline: by DES KELLY
THEY have given me a hard hat. Protective headgear appears to be part of health and safety legislation when you're interviewing Ken Bates.
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In fact the combative Leeds United chairman is showing off the latest of the many building sites that sprout up whenever he lands at a football club.
The protection might come in handy, nonetheless.
This is the same Bates who has banned me 'for life' -- twice -- a sentence that defies reincarnation and who once had a gravestone mocked up with my name on it.
But last week Bates offered to buy lunch in his home of Monte Carlo to laugh at past rows and bury the hatchet.
I agreed this was a splendid idea, but we swapped Monaco for the less glamorous surroundings of West Yorkshire to examine his immense new project, the rebuilding of Leeds United.
As I arrive at his office, Bates has had a mere two hours sleep, a bout of insomnia he blames on late-night cheese on toast, not anxiety. He is also seeing the world anew through eyes shorn of those distinctive spectacles thanks to recent laser surgery.
He instantly complains that my footwear is 'unusual', wonders why I haven't worn a suit and gripes that my vehicle suggests I earn too much. Truce or not, it's a comforting somehow to find he can be as grumpy as ever.
But underneath the caricature grouch -- an image he enjoys playing up to -- Bates is welcoming and relaxed. He is obviously in fine form and appears to be actively enjoying being in charge of Leeds at long last.
It hasn't always been that way. Over the course of a bruising five years, fans have openly questioned Bates's motives and abused the changes he forced through on issues such as ticket prices.
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'Supporters always wanted to know what the catch was,' he says. 'They accused me of being an asset stripper, until I pointed out there were no f****** assets to strip.'
The club battled with the Inland Revenue and lost, they went into administration, and for a while, it looked like the grisly old dog had finally bitten off more than he could chew.
'Yes, it was bad,' he admits. 'But we're through the worst, I think. Most of the unpopular decisions have been taken and people are beginning to accept me now. They are coming round to the idea I might have been right after all.'
Forget the idea that The Damned United had anything to do with Brian Clough. Leeds were truly damned when ex-chairman Peter Ridsdale gambled everything on European success and failed with spectacular consequences.
Longines Evidenza Ladies Watch L2.155.4.71.6 The Champions League semi-finalists of 2001 plummeted to the third division of English football within less than a decade, having collapsed with more than [pounds sterling]100million of debt. Leeds were the most grotesque example of hubris ever seen in football.
'What happened here was a disgrace,' says Bates quietly. 'When I came to Leeds the place was rotten. Behind the scenes, it was in a terrible state. Ridsdale borrowed [pounds sterling]100m, spent it all on players and had nothing to show for it. He spent nothing on the ground and we're still carrying outChristian Louboutin Shoes
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