Whenever Karren Brady strutted into Birmingham City football club’s HQ, she inspired a mixture of fear and male admiration. Dressed in a chic designer suit, accessorised with Prada heels and a Chanel handbag, there was no question managing director Karren, then just 23, was boss.
Even her car, a top-of-the-range Porsche, was flasher than those owned by the team’s highest-paid players.
She was a trailblazer, and an inspiration to girls and young women across the UK – and not just for the way she could command a room.
Sources around at the time tell me that she had a thick skin and ‘she took absolutely no s***’.
There is, of course, the telling story of when she boarded the team bus for the first time. When a player yelled out, ‘I can see your tits from here’, she issued the stunning retort: ‘When I sell you to Crewe, you won’t be able to see them from there, will you?’
She was true to her word. The player was swiftly dispatched, and her status as the First Lady of Football was cemented.
So it’s all the more puzzling, then, that after 33 years, Karren seems to have lost some of that commanding confidence – at least, where her own appearance is concerned.
Photographs uploaded to her Instagram page – which show Karren, 56, looking as glamorous as ever in her trademark razor-sharp outfits – have been heavily filtered to smooth her skin and remove any signs of imperfection.
Karren Brady’s natural look on a recent episode of The Apprentice
Photographs uploaded to her Instagram page – which show Karren, 56, looking as glamorous as ever in her trademark razor-sharp outfits – have been heavily filtered to smooth her skin and remove any signs of imperfection
But the effect is to make her almost unrecognisable, as viewers of BBC’s The Apprentice can attest. After the first episode of the latest series aired on Thursday, she uploaded several pictures of herself wearing an elegant white Roland Mouret dress.
One commentator wrote: ‘Ageless and gorgeous.’ But those who had tuned into the programme, on which she has been a mentor for 16 years, noted that she looked much more natural on-screen.
It’s left some questioning whether no-nonsense Karren, who has long shrugged off comments about her appearance, has finally succumbed to societal pressures faced by older women in the spotlight.
Those familiar with the savvy businesswoman say it is ‘very sad’ that she appears to have resorted to filters rather than being comfortable in her own skin – especially, as they point out, she looks ‘amazing’ without them.
Others argue there is little harm in it. As one put it: ‘Who wouldn’t want to look better with a bit of help from the internet?’
Karren has long been aware that her appearance has been ‘judged’ from the start of her career at Birmingham City, which is, they say, something that got only worse when she became a television star after joining ITV’s Loose Woman as a panellist in 1999.
And friends suggest that her level-headed approach and the ‘audacity’ she had in making a success of herself as a woman in the male-dominated world of football had left her ‘fair game’ to be vilified ‘by people who want to make themselves look better’.
‘Karren has had it all over the years,’ one associate of hers tells me. ‘From all those years back as the Birmingham boss she would be sexually ridiculed from the stands at football grounds around the country.
‘You can imagine the vile stuff that was said about her. She has thick skin, but it hurt. Then when she got into television she was judged on what she looked like. Her tough demeanour seemed to make that all OK.
‘Perhaps it’s jealousy, but this stuff has long-lasting effects. Karren has been trolled for her appearance relentlessly, it’s horrible. It’s very sad that now in her mid-50s she has felt the need to pile on filters on social media when in real life she looks amazing.’
Karren has long been a career ‘agony aunt’ to young women, who already face significant pressure to look good, and who will also no doubt note the discrepancy between her real-life appearance and her Instagram pictures.
Today, as well as being a peer – Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge – and the holder of a CBE, Karren is the vice-chair of Premier League side West Ham. And even at their stadium in Stratford, East London, she thinks nothing of posting heavily filtered pictures of herself in front of the pitch.
‘It’s bizarre,’ says my insider. ‘She’s adored and all the blokes think she’s amazing. They much prefer her without the filters.’
Away from work, Karren is married to her husband of 30 years, former Canadian international footballer Paul Peschisolido, who she met when he played at Birmingham while she was managing director. The pair have two children, Sofia and Paolo.
I’ve met Paul, 54, on several occasions and he is about as down-to-earth and kind as football stars come. His once-jet black hair has gone grey as he has aged – and he has chosen not to dye it.
‘Karren wasn’t really into Instagram until Sofia got into it,’ says a source… ‘That’s where she learned to use filters and they can become quite addictive and obsessive’
‘It’s not like Karren has a toyboy who she needs to compare herself to,’ says one pal. ‘Since they got together his friends told him he is punching above his weight.’
But there is one member of the family who is a dab hand at social media – their influencer daughter Sofia. The 28-year-old Nottingham University graduate lives in Dubai with her fiancé Frankie Makin and their sons Leo, 22 months, and George, four months.
She regularly posts glamorous shots to her 300,000 Instagram followers, which highlight her idyllic life and £1.4million home.
‘Karren wasn’t really into Instagram until Sofia got into it,’ says a source. ‘Then she found it all rather fun and very useful, like every other celebrity and public figure, to use it to enhance her profile. That’s where she learned to use filters and they can become quite addictive and obsessive. The youngsters were doing it, so why not?’
It has also been noted that Karren has dramatically slimmed down in recent months, and was forced to deny she was using weight-loss jabs. Instead, she insists, she is a regular at the David Lloyd gym in Fulham, and goes three or four times a week.
‘I’m not on Ozempic,’ she said. ‘I’d much prefer the conversation to be focused around my work.’
Friends say Karren decided to get ‘fit and healthy’ after becoming a grandmother. One says: ‘She is literally the most glamorous granny you could find but having grandchildren really made her look at herself.’
I’ve met Karren several times over the years and always admired her because of her early days as a football heroine. Once, she said to me: ‘I don’t take any old rubbish, I never have and I never will. You have to be tough.’
But that said, it seems Karren might be a little softer when it comes to her appearance than she’d like to admit.
