“He denies ever saying it now.” Nigel Webb is recalling the time his eldest son, then aged 10, sat down at a meal one particular family holiday and told his dad he needed to have a talk. “He said: ‘Dad, I have something to tell you.’ I thought: what is he going to say? Anyway, he said: ‘Dad I think I’m a Man United fan’. I said: ‘If you want to support Man United we will never talk about football again’. I took him to Elland Road and bought him the full kit. He’s an ardent Leeds fan now.”

Born in South Yorkshire but raised further up the Ridings in Bingley, Webb has been following the club since he was a child in the 1970s and is taken aback that – whisper it – some people have a soft spot for Leeds now after entertaining the Premier League last year on their return. When he started supporting the team, the moniker Dirty Leeds was at its most damning with rivals upset at what they saw as the side’s gamesmanship and fouling. Brian Clough, who took over as manager from Don Revie for, famously, just 44 days, told all the players they had won their medals in the Revie era through cheating. “It’s amazing,” Webb marvels. “All these years, we’ve been everyone’s most hated team.”

The head of development at British Land tries to get up to Elland Road as much as he can and is hardcore enough to go to Millwall away – a fearsome place for any fan, especially those of Leeds. “Last time I was there we were in the Championship. The Millwall fans were lobbing glass bottles at us. The police did nothing. It was like going back to the 1970s.”

A chartered surveyor by background, the 57-year-old’s commitment to construction is almost as long, having joined the developer 30 years ago next March, while he has been in his current role since 2003.