Norman Cook has labelled his £500,000 stake in Brighton and Hove Albion as "the most expensive parking space in history".

His only demand in return for his investment was a place to park at Withdean so that he can nip in at the last minute to watch home matches.

Seagulls' fan Cook, better known as Fatboy Slim, has broken his silence over his financial commitment to the club after we exclusively revealed he has an 11 per cent shareholding for his money.

"It was blackmail basically," he joked. "Dick Knight (chairman) took me out to lunch and said we're going to have to sell Bobby (Zamora) unless someone puts a load of money in the club.

"I said 'that's blackmail' and he said 'well you can call it what you want, that's the deal', so I'm a director now I think!

"But I don't want to get involved in the running of the club. It's a donation really. I don't think it's a really good investment. I don't think I'll ever get the money back.

"It's an investment of the heart, not the head. What it has gone down as is the most expensive parking space in history because that was the one condition of the deal.

"I'd said to Dick I'll give you this money, but does it mean I'll get a parking space at the ground because I can't do park and ride?

"I'm always late. I always roll up about five minutes before kick off, so I'm allowed to drive to the ground now. It's fantastic.

"They just put a traffic cone in one of the parking spaces and I'm allowed to pick it up and move it and park there."

The Argus also exclusively revealed earlier this year how Knight involved Cook in the buy-out of former chairman Bill Archer.

"I don't know if the Bobby thing was true," Cook said. "Bobby's injured at the moment but he has signed a four-year contract. I think he's happy here.

"The main thing was to buy Archer out. We needed enough money to buy Archer out once and for all, so we've severed all links to that toad.

"I managed to keep it quiet and then you printed that I'd put some money into the club. You said exactly how much and what percentage of the club I owned and it was all true.

"I didn't know who the other directors were. A lot of them wanted to be anonymous, but when we actually did the deal and set up this consortium they sent a list of who put in what and that list must have fallen into the hands of The Argus because you were frighteningly accurate.

"After you ran that front page all the nationals started calling up and I was saying it's no big deal, I didn't want to make a big song and dance about it."

Cook's father-in-law Johnny Ball, who used to present children's programmes on TV, is also an Albion fan and tries to get all the club gossip from him. "My father-in-law thinks I get all the inside news," Cook said.

"Sometimes he gets me to ring Dick up and say 'so who's going to be the new manager then?' He goes on the web site every Monday morning and there is all the gossip and chat.

"Someone will say something like 'I think we're buying a player from Arsenal'. He'll text me straight away asking if it's true, but I don't know."