Oysters, Insomnia and a £296M Art Sale

With 90 minutes on the clock, the game was entering two minutes of injury time. Spurs were hanging on at 1-1 against Chelsea. Down to ten men since just after the start of the second half, it had been a valiant rearguard action.

My wife Tracy and I were watching the action from about row 20 where we’d moved to get a better view of the game. Sitting behind the goal in the front row made it hard enough to watch the match, without having to peer beyond the oversized electronic hoardings. From that improved position we watched the last play of the match. A shot from Jamie Donley looked like it was going to sneak in at the foot of the post, but it rebounded off the upright. Moments later the net rippled as Richarlison tapped home a goal that even he couldn’t mess up and the Spurs fans around me went into delirium. This was our night.

It was only a pre-season friendly, but for the massed ranks of Australian Spurs fans in the ‘active supporters’ area at the Sydney Olympic Stadium, it didn’t feel like one. It was the culmination of a week of celebrations, marking 25 years of OzSpurs, the Official Australian Spurs Supporters Club. To top the week off with a last-minute win against Chelsea was more than the Australian fans could have hoped for. 

It all started on the preceding Monday. Tracy and I arrived back from the UK in time for Spurs pre-season tour in Sydney and were still suffering the effects of jet lag. We’d agreed to join a Spurs community engagement event at the Sydney Fish Market - a tour of the brand new $750 million facility with Ledley King. The club were keen to be seen to be taking an interest in the culture of the city and the whole thing was set up for their social media content creators to capture. 

In addition to Ledley there were a few other members of the Spurs staff hanging around and six of us from OzSpurs. We were all filmed eating oysters and touring the facility, Ledley occasionally being stopped by passers-by for a selfie. Magnanimous as ever, he would stop and smile for the camera, something he must have done thousands of times before in his role as club ambassador.

Just after the oyster consumption I noticed a familiar face had joined the group. It was Alasdair Gold, the prominent Spurs journalist, there for a scheduled interview with Ledley. When I first spotted him, Alasdair was talking to a woman who seemed to be part of the club entourage, and they were discussing the end of the season. Tracy was also in the group.

“I couldn’t watch the last few games,” she said. “They were so awful.”

Alasdair had suffered insomnia at the prospect of relegation and the impact it would have on the club, and no doubt also his livelihood.

“I just couldn’t sleep for the last couple of weeks,” he said.

The woman agreed.

“I couldn’t sleep for months,” she said. Which I felt was a bit excessive. I knew she worked there but would it really mean that much to her?

As we prepared to depart, the answer to that question became evident. Spotting for the first time the name on her lanyard it suddenly made a lot of sense. It said ‘Viv Lewis’.

All of a sudden her insomnia didn’t seem quite so excessive. If I’d realised who she was I might have asked her about Sotheby’s sale of 25 paintings from the family trust collection. At £296.3 million it was the most valuable single-owner collection ever sold in Europe. 

I wonder if she’s been losing any sleep over that.

Andrew Pettifer is the author of "When the Final Whistle Blows: Glory, Grief and Tottenham Hotspur".  All proceeds are being donated to cancer research, please click the link to check it out.