Wigan's superwoman on the long road from paupers to the Premier League

She then doubles up with laughter, insists she cannot possibly be quoted on anything she has just said and demands the interview return to more serious matters.

So what would she have if I offered to buy her a drink? 'Champagne,' she says. 'I'm not an expensive date.'

If her young grandchildren already thought they had the best 'nan' in the country — after all, how many kids can strut around the school playground and claim theirs runs a Premier League football club? — then wait until they are old enough to appreciate fully what she has experienced in 21 years at Wigan.

Spencer has seen it all. From standing outside Springfield Park with a collection bucket to raise enough money to pay everyone's wages to offering Roman Abramovich a meat pie in the boardroom. From negotiating multi-million-pound transfers to driving the minibus for Paul Jewell and his staff's Christmas knees-up.

Spend a couple of hours in the company of this 61-year-old woman and you can see why Jewell invited her along. She might be a toughtalking accountant who says she will not tolerate anyone who 'takes the p**s', but she also has an infectious laugh and a wicked sense of humour.

'I do love being in the company of men,' she says, trying to explain how she has survived for so long in a male-dominated environment. 'In fact, I sometimes wonder if I should have been born a man. Put it this way: I'm certainly not a lady who likes to shop.'

Nevertheless, this is the first proper newspaper interview she has given, her only other media experience of note an appearance on an Esther Rantzen show about 10 years ago. 'Why would anyone want to know about me?' she says modestly.

The programme was about women in football and at one stage Esther asked if her job was to blame for her divorce. 'I told her it wasn't,' she says.

'That said, the job didn't help. I don't think you could do this job and stay married unless your partner was a very understanding person. Since my divorce I've been in relationships and I think they've suffered because of the job I do.

Some men simply weren't comfortable with it.

'It's a demanding job. I tend to lose weight during the last week of August and most of January because everything is happening at 100mph.'

When Dave Whelan bought the club in 1995 she expected to be sacked. She had served the club for nine years, having been hired by former chairman Bill Kenyon, but she was convinced Whelan would bring in his own people.

'I was the club secretary and Dave sent in his accountants to go through the books before he took over. I was sure I'd be off but I think they reported back that I was doing all the right things. Dave then called me in. He not only wanted me to stay but made me chief executive and two or three years after that he invited me to join the board.'

While Whelan hires and fires the managers — as he did last weekend, dismissing Chris Hutchings — Spencer is left to make sure everything runs smoothly.

On this particular day at the JJB Stadium, the arrival of the club's official 2008 calendars send her potty. There are boxes and boxes of them and the front cover is dominated by a photograph of Hutchings.

Not her decision but something something that is now going to cost money to put right.

'I'm annoyed about those calendars because we can't let them go out like that. It's not fair to the club, not fair to the supporters and definitely not fair to the new manager, when we get him... or her.

Now that'd be a story! 'Seriously, though, it's wasting money I can't stand. Probably because I can remember how tough it once was here. How close we came to going under a few times. It was a nightmare.

'In the early Nineties we had average gates of around 1,800 and the highest paid player was probably on £250 a week. The wage bill for everyone, the manager, the staff, players, me, everyone, was about £5,000 a week.

'But we were struggling to raise even that. I'd go and knock on directors' doors and they'd give me £1,000. And we'd do collections outside the ground.

'They were hard times but when Dave bought us it was a different ball game and it took me quite a while to adjust. But I think it's why I get on with the chairman so well because, for the size of the wages and everything now, I still hate wasting money. We had to work so long without it, so I still appreciate the value of it even if the figures we are now working with are colossal by comparison.'

It is also why she has such a problem with the less scrupulous agents. 'There are some good agents who do the job properly,' she says. 'But the problem I have is the fact that they work for the players but expect to be paid by the clubs. They come in, take everything from you and then expect to rape you as well.

'As I say, there are some good agents. But they are in the minority in my experience.'

Managers she has more time for. 'I've seen 13 or 14 come and go in my time here,' she says. 'Losing Chris was particularly sad because we've all worked with him for six years and he's a lovely man.

'The chairman was desperate for him to do well and it was because he'd been so good for us as Paul Jewell's assistant that we wanted to give him a chance. But once you've had a taste of the Premier League you want to stay there. It's not just about the money. It's about the prestige and the quality of the football. The chairman felt we couldn't afford to wait until Christmas.

He felt he had to act now.' So what about the next man? 'Too early to say,' she insists. Anyone with skinny legs, though, need not apply.