John Fenty And The Strange Case Of His Financial Baking

Yesterday, former Grimsby Town chairman John Fenty sent an email to the administrator of popular fansite, The Fishy. Mr Fenty took exception to a number of comments on its forum that he felt undermined the work that he had done for the club, and some that defamed him outright. The entire missive is available to read here, replete with accusations of "liable", assertions that he had taken "screen scrapes" of offending posts and references to problems with future "financial baking". There are bits where he comes off a little deranged: "What are they going to say if I convert loans into shares now!!!! that I am vie for control." And bits where he throws in a few light-hearted non-sequiturs: "There are those that think Noddy and Big Ears are running the club, by god I would like to see them stand up to be counted." 

Admittedly John is not and never will be any kind of writer, and certainly has every right to take umbrage with potentially libellous comments, but to outsiders looking in the whole thing would appear to be something of a shambles. And it is. It's just that Grimsby Town fans know what he's like.

Simply, he's a very sensitive fellow, one who's been known to not only trawl the depths of the GTFC forums in search of every last comment on him, but also to then respond in his own inimitable fashion. A good example of this is April 2008's fondly remembered 'Chairman's Response', also known as '(Thread) Chairman UTM2007 WRONG'. While that 27 paragraph stream of consciousness 'piece' in response to the views of one message board poster is still online, their post is not, having since fallen down the back of the internet. It wasn't very important and wasn't very widely read, thus not really worthy of response, never mind an official one of such length. People who hadn't seen it probably made up the majority of people who attempted to read the chairman's riposte, before stopping about three paragraphs in and wondering what on earth he was banging on about. To this day that remains unclear, if typical of his seven year reign.

Now I don't know if he ever does get litigious, but it is clear that even after resigning from his more public position as chairman to become a director, nothing has changed in regard to his willingness to Google himself. So:

• John Fenty turned all his lights off at Halloween and pretended he wasn't in so he didn't have to give out sweets to kids.
• John Fenty is an ardent cow tipper.
• John Fenty lied to not only Charles, but Eddie too.
• John Fenty caused the global economic crisis.
• John Fenty once drunkenly shouted abuse at Barry from Eastenders.
• John Fenty signed The Pigeon Detectives.

I'm not sure if any of the above statements are factual, but equally I'm not sure that they're not. If you're reading, John, I want answers. And I want them posted in a rambling, incoherent article on the official Grimsby Town website.