Karren Brady — British business executive, Baroness, vice-chair of West Ham United, star of The Apprentice; ran Birmingham City FC from age 23
The gist
Karren Brady tells Steven Bartlett how a lifelong streak of defiance and a clear set of core values (ambition, determination, integrity) propelled her from menial office work and radio ad sales into running a football club at 23. She describes closing the pivotal David Sullivan radio deal, persuading him to buy Birmingham City after spotting an ad in the Financial Times, and turning the club profitable. She discusses leadership versus management, building candid cultures, making tough personnel decisions without emotion, and battling sexism in football. The second half covers her decades-long marriage to ex-footballer Paul Peschisolido, candor and non-neediness in relationships, acts-of-service love, and her views on feminism, ambition, and contentment.
Big reveals
- She met David Sullivan as a radio ad client at LBC; he became the country's highest commercial-radio spender at 2 million pounds a year.
- At 22-23 she spotted a Financial Times ad for Birmingham City in administration and persuaded Sullivan to buy it, saying "You buy it and I'll run it."
- Birmingham City was bought within three days and made a trading profit for the first time in its history after her first year.
- At a Saudi Arabia panel she publicly told a male panelist who interrupted her, "One second, I asked my question first," to applause.
- On her first away game a steward directed her to the "director's wives" ladies room; she insisted she was the managing director.
- During The Apprentice she films 16-18 hours a day, seven days a week for five weeks with no day off.
- She started HRT recently and found herself singing in the kitchen, realizing the treatment was working.
Things worth remembering
- As a child she cut her own hair the night before a school photo, leaving lumpy gaps in her fringe.
- By 18 she had identified her three core values: ambitious, determined, and having integrity.
- West Ham is moving from a 60,000 to a 62,500 capacity stadium, with planning permission secured.
- West Ham has the cheapest season tickets in the Premier League; the Olympic Stadium move sold out 54,000 season tickets.
- At 21 she worked so hard her fridge was never turned on and the oven had never been used.
- She attended a boarding school with roughly 20 girls and 600 boys, which prepared her for male-dominated football.
- She cites research that 54,000 returning new mothers are badly treated at work and pushed out of jobs.
- She notes for every pound a man makes a woman makes 86p, a gap projected to take 100 years to close.
- She holidays with fellow Apprentice stars Lord Alan Sugar and Claude Littner, calling them firm friends.
- Her happy place with husband Paul is Soho Farmhouse, where they go roughly one weekend a month.