Leeds United chairman Ken Bates has one more trademark blast: All these foreign owners are totally clueless!

They have given me a hard hat. Protective headgear appears to be part of health and safety legislation when you're interviewing Ken Bates.



In fact the combative Leeds United chairman is showing off the latest of the many building sites that sprout up whenever he lands at a football club.



The protection might come in handy, nonetheless. This is the same Bates who has banned me 'for life' - twice - a sentence that defies reincarnation and who once had a gravestone mocked up with my name on it.

To Elland back: Leeds United chairman Ken Bates has been through the mill with the Yorkshire club

But last week Bates offered to buy lunch in his home of Monte Carlo to laugh at past rows and bury the hatchet.



I agreed this was a splendid idea, but we swapped Monaco for the less glamorous surroundings of West Yorkshire to examine his immense new project, the rebuilding of Leeds United.



As I arrive at his office, Bates has had a mere two hours sleep, a bout of insomnia he blames on late-night cheese on toast, not anxiety. He is also seeing the world anew through eyes shorn of those distinctive spectacles thanks to recent laser surgery.



He instantly complains that my footwear is 'unusual', wonders why I haven't worn a suit and gripes that my vehicle suggests I earn too much. Truce or not, it's a comforting somehow to find he can be as grumpy as ever.



But underneath the caricature grouch - an image he enjoys playing up to - Bates is welcoming and relaxed. He is obviously in fine form and appears to be actively enjoying being in charge of Leeds at long last.



Calling a spade a spade: Bates has remained candid in style

It hasn't always been that way. Over the course of a bruising five years, fans have openly questioned Bates's motives and abused the changes he forced through on issues such as ticket prices.



'Supporters always wanted to know what the catch was,' he says. 'They accused me of being an asset stripper, until I pointed out there were no f****** assets to strip.'



The club battled with the Inland Revenue and lost, they went into administration, and for a while, it looked like the grisly old dog had finally bitten off more than he could chew.



'Yes, it was bad,' he admits. 'But we're through the worst, I think. Most of the unpopular decisions have been taken and people are beginning to accept me now. They are coming round to the idea I might have been right after all.'



Forget the idea that The Damned United had anything to do with Brian Clough. Leeds were truly damned when ex-chairman Peter Ridsdale gambled everything on European success and failed with spectacular consequences.



The Champions League semi-finalists of 2001 plummeted to the third division of English football within less than a decade, having collapsed with more than £100million of debt. Leeds were the most grotesque example of hubris ever seen in football.



'What happened here was a disgrace,' says Bates quietly. 'When I came to Leeds the place was rotten. Behind the scenes, it was in a terrible state. Ridsdale borrowed £100m, spent it all on players and had nothing to show for it. He spent nothing on the ground and we're still carrying out repairs he neglected back then.'



When I point out he was 'living the dream', Bates replies: 'Yeah, well he left others with the nightmare.'



But the club are on the march again. Leeds are preparing to take their npower Championship bow this evening against Derby County and casting a hopeful eye on returning to the stage where they undoubtedly belong, the Barclays Premier League.

The club are essentially 'debt free' and even have a £4m cash reserve in the bank, according to Bates. Confidence around the club is being rebuilt, brick by brick.

Bates on the day he arrived at Elland Road in 2005

Bates insists I see the evidence for myself and we set off on the tour of his various building sites. Workmen scurry to look busy or simply run for cover as we approach, tipped off the chairman is about to make a snap inspection by covert calls from the main office.



He proudly shows off the shell of a multi-million pound pavilion, an expanded venue he will fill with club members that provides what he insists will be the best conference facilities from Newcastle to Manchester, earning millions for his club on non-match days.



Restaurants are being upgraded, bars improved and executive boxes adapted to accommodate a larger audience. He shows me his Yorkshire Radio station, which broadcasts live Leeds games and the LUTV channel. Plans are afoot to build hotels, a restaurant and shopping arcade and a nightclub. Everything is designed to promote the club and encourage fans to part with more cash.



It reminds me of Chelsea Mark II, I suggest.



King of the Blues: Bates during his time in charge at Stamford Bridge

'Well, everyone took the p*** out of Chelsea Village,' he says. 'But pretty soon everyone was copying the ideas. It was based on the simple principle that a football club earns its living from around 25 match days a year. But the place is still there to be used for another 340 days.'



That has been the Bates mantra for as long as I can remember, but why bother with the hassle of trying it all again? After all, he is now 78.



This is his fifth club, following empire-building stints at Wigan, Oldham, Partick Thistle and Chelsea. 'Why should I stop?' he replies. 'What would I do? I hate golf. Fishing is like watching paint dry and I'm not one for sitting around. Do that and you just turn into a cabbage like' - here the lawyers have asked me to remove the name of an old adversary at the Football Association on the ground that the remarks show 'malice'.

This will please his wife, Susannah, who had tried to shush her man at this point, aware that he was veering wildly off the diplomatic path. She is credited for mellowing Bates in recent years, but flashes of the irascible old battler still burst through.



Bates tells other anecdotes about a former business partner who betrayed him and now lives in a one-room bedsit; he names a director he believes took a £1m backhander to scupper a TV deal, and shares an array of colourful tales that would have us both in the High Court if they were repeated in full here.



There is no question Bates thrives on being at the centre of it all. 'An ex-chairman is a nobody,' he admits quietly at one point. And he loves being somebody. So where does a former travel entrepreneur, dairy farmer and relatively small-time property developer fit in during an era where global corporations, oil-rich oligarchs, royal families and possibly an entire Communist state play football power games?



Won't he be a million miles away from the top table even if Leeds make it to the Premier League again?



'Not necessarily,' he says. 'Half of the foreign owners don't know what they're doing. Half of them don't have a clue. You can't automatically buy success, not always. You need more than money to be successful.'



Name names, I say.



'Look at those two jokers at Liverpool - Tom Hicks and George Gillett. They meet in some Texan bar and decide they are going to be bestest friends and run a football club together. Do me a favour. That was always a disaster.



'Most of the clubs who are in the s*** are, or were recently, under foreign ownership. Look at them: Hull City, Derby County, West Ham, Notts County, Portsmouth and Cardiff City.



'The trouble is people come into the game and think they can make a fast buck. You can't. You have to build something. You have to do more than just buy players.

Russian revolution: Bates handed over the reins at Stamford Bridge to Roman Abramovich in 2003.

'I've been there, done it and sold the T-shirt to someone. There isn't a trick I haven't seen. My policy is quite simple. Apply basic business principles to running a football club - but so many of them don't.



'What happened at Portsmouth was another horrible joke. But I've lost count of the number of people I've met who say they represent the brother or a cousin of some sheik or a sultan who plans to bring me untold millions.



'I always say "oh yeah?" then bring me proof of identity and gold-plated guarantees for cash, not some scribbled note from a financier friend. They always disappear. I know the Glazer family gets an almighty slagging at Manchester United, but to be fair to them they have never interfered,' says Bates.



'They have let the football people get on with it - Sir Alex Ferguson and his management team and also David Gill in the boardroom.



'But does their debt look like a reasonable proposition? The answer is "no" - not from where I'm standing. They used the assets of the business to buy it, which is what the Yorkshire consortium at Leeds before I took over.



'They borrowed the money on horrendous terms, because they didn't think Leeds were going to get relegated - and they did - and then they panicked.



'They sold the ground for £8m - and agreed a repurchase price of £15m. They sold the training ground for £3m and the re-purchase price was set at £5m. There are things that still need to be cleared up.'



The same could be said about Leeds United. New Football League rules came into force demanding clubs must declare the identity of their owners. But the information posted on the Leeds website is obtuse, to put it mildly. And just because we're getting along over a glass of Pinot Grigio, it doesn't mean Bates is about to give away his business secrets.



Who are you answerable to, I ask?



'My shareholders'.



Who are they and do they call you to account?



'Nobody needs to call me to account because I do such a good job. They just stand amazed that I do this.'



Why won't you say who owns the club?



'I have told the Football League and they know.'



So tell us. Who owns Leeds?



'It is owned by discretionary trusts that the League are aware of.' And who owns them? 'It's up to the discretion of the people who own the trusts to say so.

'But you are the executive chairman. Who do you work to?



'The owners'.



Who are the owners?



' I told you. That's for them to say. But they can't believe how lucky they are.'



Why?



'Because I've never taken a penny out of this club. I'm working for nothing. I have never been paid for any work I've done here. I've been very careful. I'm making a point.'



A point about what?



'I've been very careful to ensure they can't throw any s*** at me.' Who's 'they'?



'Anyone'.



How much have you personally put in to Leeds?



'It's vulgar to talk about money.'



We've been talking about money for hours.



'Well, I'm not going to tell you. I'm not pretending to be an extraordinarily rich man, but I'm doing what every football fan would love to do. I'm running a club - a very big club - and one that is only going to get bigger.'



As you can see, I have had more success nailing jelly to a wall.



Although Bates refuses to elucidate, the Yorkshire club are said to belong to the holders of 10,000 shares registered to a company in the Cayman Islands and administered in Geneva.



But the idea that Bates would ever put himself in a position where he is answerable to others seems laughable. He has spent his entire life ensuring he has control.



My guess is that Leeds are owned by Bates and another couple of business backers that he has known for years, and he just likes to be mysterious about it to keep everyone guessing and at arm's length.



Why? No idea.



For now, he is definitely in charge. So what is the motive?



'Achievement. I want to build something. Supporters only see the top of the iceberg. But I think I've made a reasonable contribution to the advancement of the football business in this country.'



Bates negotiated the deal to ensure TV cash is shared equally, he proposed parachute payments for relegated clubs, fought for the new Wembley (but was off the project when the scandalous contract was renegotiated), was the first to introduce CCTV at grounds and can claim many other landmarks besides.



Now living in Monaco's tax haven, he jets in for matches and business.



Otherwise, his normal day is to wake, watch Sky Sports News, switch to BBC's Look North, then it's a Jacuzzi and the first of his calls to club chief executive Shaun Harvey before 8.30am. By 10am the faxes start coming through and he has read his two newspapers, The Daily Mail and The Times.



He also speaks to manager Simon Grayson once a day without fail.



Don't you have a computer, I ask?



'I've got a computer,' he says. 'It looks very nice. Never use it, but it looks nice'.



So what would you tell any owners looking for advice?



'Stick to basic business principles and don't get carried away just because it's football. Also be nice to people on the way up, since you might meet them on the way down.'



'Since when were you nice?' I laugh.



'I am nice,' he replies, adding: 'F*** off!' just to prove the point.



On that note, we part on good terms. It has been a fun day.



Bates is always going to upset someone, but if I were a Leeds fan, I'd be quietly thankful he was in there fighting for my club. I'll stick by that too, even if I'm banned again this morning.



