Someone once said “No good deed goes unpunished”. Philanthropy is often the target of suspicion, usually based on the detractor’s certainty that the person is only doing good for some hidden motive or so that people will like them. Leaving aside the obvious riposte – “What’s wrong with that?” in the latter case – it is also not always true that everyone is necessarily always putting their own interests first.

Another widely held misconception is that millionaires are obsessed only with money. The very few millionaires I have met or know enough about to form an opinion seem to me to be motivated only by the desire to make an idea work, to make something better, to create something different or exciting. Most of the super-rich could have stopped pretty darn quickly and bathed in asses’ milk for the rest of their lives had money been the sole motivation. Take the case of Richard Branson. Had he only wanted to make money, his Virgin Records empire would have been enough. Wind forward through planes, trains and rockets and you see a man motivated by the passion to achieve and to create, not to amass wealth.

I am also a conspiracy sceptic. All the evidence would suggest that very few conspiracies succeed and the reason is obvious. The people required, say, to convince a world hungry for sensation that men had landed on the moon if that were not the case would number in the hundreds. And none of them have since whispered to a loved one that it was all filmed in a studio in Burbank? None of the hundreds of NASA employees have broken ranks? No file has fallen into the wrong hands? Come on… It is for these reasons and more that I am perplexed that some fans of Wycombe Wanderers really believe long term Wycombe resident and fan Ivor Beeks and the club’s new chairman Andrew Howard have some secret agenda for devoting hours of their time without financial reward to a club that has no prospect, even in the eyes of the most optimistic, obsessed fan, of producing a financial reward. Andrew Howard has stated that only five of the 72 League clubs are profitable, but that he relishes a challenge like that and wants to do his best for our little club. For heaven’s sake let’s welcome him with open arms, applaud him and get behind the effort.