Karren Brady – First Lady of Football

Karren Brady is a woman being interviewed on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs right now. She is known as the “First Lady of Football” and is much admired by all, it seems. The very fact she has been selected for this programme implies she should in some way be esteemed, and I don’t like that, which is why I am writing this article. I respect Ms Brady’s admission that she is not academic and her overcoming a medical illness (she underwent brain surgery), but I’m afraid for me that’s where it ends. She comes across to me largely as a superficial and egotistical person with misguided values.

Ms Brady was born into money (evident from her being sent to an exclusive private school) and went to her first job at advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. I’ll let this speak for itself. From here she went to LBC as an advertising account handler, it seems, with her main client being porn baron David Sullivan (he of the Sport “newspapers”). Apparently motivated by money more than conscience, she then accepted a job on Mr Sullivan’s payroll.

Ms Brady then became the manager of a football team and continued as a workaholic. Some years later she had a child. Hailed as a “supermum”, she went back to work within three days. But this isn’t the behaviour of a supermum, it is, in my view, a maternal disgrace bordering on neglect. Why, I ask you, is the supermum not the mother who decides to put her career on hold so that she can devote the most important years to her child? Time is the most valuable and selfless thing that can be given. She says of this decision that she is not very proud of it now and tries not to think of it. She also says she does not worry about the early days of her child’s life that she missed, because “it had to be done”, but actually it didn’t have to be done.

She continued to be obsessed by work (in football, remember). She did not own a tea cup because she was never at home. She never spends a day without checking mail. So how much time does she spend with her family? Her son said to her “I wish that Blackberry would blow up”. She often speaks of herself as a success.

It seems to me that Karren Brady bought the deal sold by advertising unthinkingly – hook, line and sinker. They told her how to be, that money and power over others matters most in life, and she followed what they said.

Is her music taste profound? Well, it turned up things like Wham and ABBA, no classical, and I do wonder about her preference for Puffy Daddy’s insipid “I’ll Be Missing You” over the legendary original which it samples (“Every Breath You Take”). She redeemed herself a little in my eyes with her choice of Pride and Prejudice as her favourite novel, but although this novel deals with the material needs faced by women, it never tells women to work 100% of the time. In my view Ms Brady is another example of feminism having been interpreted too strongly by a woman, ultimately to her own expense, and it is rather sad to see.

p.s. The cross around her neck implying Christianity is not winning her any points either.