David Dein: ‘We had something special at Arsenal. When it fell away, that really hurt’

The pen sits in his jacket. It goes everywhere he does. At night, while he sleeps, it rests on the bedside table alongside him. David Dein has been in business for more than half a century, and one of his earliest lessons was that it helps if you have a story to tell. And so now he holds it up to the camera: the Mont Blanc pen with which he signed Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Sol Campbell and many more.

Not that Dein needs a memento to remind him of the good times. At the age of 79, the memory is as sharp as ever: an Arsenal fan who became its owner, its saviour and later its martyr. The highlights of his career are also some of Arsenal’s: the league title in 1989, the Invincibles of 2004, the signing of a little-known French coach called Arsène Wenger.

These are the memories that gild Dein’s new book, Calling the Shots. But there are painful stories in there, too: in 1984, his sugar -exporting business was defrauded out of £15m by a criminal conman, an ordeal he has never shared before. And the most painful recollection of all has a precise date and time.

“Eighteenth of April 2007, at 5pm,” he says. That was the moment when Peter Hill-Wood, the Arsenal chairman, walked into his office to give him his marching orders. For months, Dein had been engaged in internal boardroom wrangles over the funding of the new stadium, and his plan to attract outside investment to fill the club’s financial black hole. Finally, Dein was ordered to pack his belongings and leave the building immediately. He took out his phone to inform his family. It had already been cut off by the company.

“I’ve never spoken to anybody for 15 years on how I left Arsenal,” he says now. “I’m not a person that likes discussing negatives. But I’ve nothing to