She is gone, now, but in the offices at the London Stadium they would always know when Baroness Brady was about to arrive.
‘The senior management team would get an email from her PA,’ explains one well-placed insider. ‘It would tell them that Karren – she was always Karren and never Baroness – was on her way and that they should make sure their team made their workstations tidy, looked busy and that nobody was messing about. That next few minutes would be carnage, with everyone racing around in a panic to clean things up.’
For Brady, whose abrupt departure as vice-chair with five games of the season to go and Premier League survival in the balance has ended 16 years at West Ham United, appearances were everything. Other sources, for example, have spoken of 5am emails, demanding to know why a certain journalist had written something deemed derogatory about the club, and why it had not been brought to her attention.
Indeed each day, before 9am, Brady expected a media monitoring email, with every mention of the club in the press laid out for her.
‘She cared immensely about public perception,’ one staffer explains. ‘And while she wasn’t in her office very often, she was always on email. You’d get messages at all hours, in good times and bad.’
Brady, 57, leaves at a time of unrest. Relegation-threatened West Ham’s last set of accounts showed a loss of £102.4million before tax. At Monday night’s 0-0 draw away to Crystal Palace, fans once again aired their expletive-laden anger at the board.
She is gone, now, but in the offices at the London Stadium they would always know when Baroness Brady was about to arrive
Brady (right, with West Ham’s then-chairmen David Gold, left, and David Sullivan, centre) leaves with her legacy secured in the form of West Ham’s London Stadium
When news of her exit broke yesterday morning, some supporters celebrated, claiming that in chairman David Sullivan, who remains, there is now one more enemy to go. The Hammers are just two points outside the relegation zone after a horrendous season but do appear to have turned a corner following the arrival of manager Nuno Espirito Santo. The timing appears curious.
Regardless of how the campaign plays out, however, Brady’s legacy will no doubt be her impact off the field. Under her watch, the club moved from Upton Park to the London Stadium a decade ago.
She was the architect of a staggering deal which still causes them to wince in Whitehall. A stunning agreement which saw West Ham move from their traditional 35,000-capacity home to a sweeping 62,500-seat venue.
Some call it the deal of the century. Under the terms of a lopsided 99-year lease, the club pays £4m in annual rent for the former Olympic Stadium. Taxpayers then subsidise operating losses. Last year the operating company recorded a staggering loss of £68m. Should they end up relegated, that rent will be cut in half.
‘She not only got the Government to pay for the house, she made them pay for the lawn to be mowed,’ one source explains.
While the deal may be a disaster for the taxpayer, it is an incredible success for West Ham that speaks volumes over how Brady operates, according to those who know her well. It also sheds some light on the personality behind a face familiar to millions thanks to her role on The Apprentice.
‘They say that when you go in to make a deal you start from a position of asking for something you never think you are going to get, something outlandish,’ explains one former business associate. ‘The idea is that if you start with what you want, you end up with something less. But with Karren, she went into the stadium talks with something beyond what she was looking for and ended up getting it.
‘The problem was that she was so ruthless. It’s always a good idea to leave some crumbs on the table so everyone can walk away thinking they have got something out of it. Karren didn’t leave any crumbs on the table.’
‘It’s always a good idea to leave some crumbs on the table so everyone can walk away thinking they have got something out of it. Karren didn’t leave any crumbs on the table’
When news of her exit broke yesterday morning, some supporters celebrated, claiming that in chairman David Sullivan, who remains, there is now one more enemy to go
That controlled aggression, witnessed by Government officials back in 2013, is often what set her apart over 33 years in football.
‘David (Sullivan) used to call her his attack dog,’ explains a former colleague. ‘She’s seriously intelligent and is often the smartest person in the room. She has an unnerving ability to get straight to the point.
‘She’s an outrageous negotiator and she can be incredibly charming. She knows the power of personality and often plays on that. But she is fiercely adversarial. Anyone she deals with, in a business sense, she has to beat. A lot of people at other clubs will tell you they do not like doing business with her because it can be quite the experience.
‘I know of some people who would call in sick to avoid having to face her in a meeting. She would out-alpha male the alpha males.’
Brady has never been backwards in championing her own successes which, as a trailblazer for women in football, may not come as a surprise. One sponsor spoke of an initial meeting at which she spent its entirety talking of her own achievements.
In 2016, she was asked to write the foreword for Farewell to Upton Park, a book released to mark West Ham’s departure from the Boleyn Ground. What followed included the wonderfully blunt and revealing line: ‘I am immensely proud of the role I have played in making that move possible.’
Perhaps such a trait comes from arriving as a young woman in a fiercely male-dominated world. Brady was 23 when she persuaded Sullivan to buy Birmingham City and to make her chief executive. Clubs across the EFL found, all of a sudden, they had to open the doors of their male-only boardrooms not only to a young upstart but to a female, no less.
‘She needed to be a strong character to deal with that,’ explains one former chairman at a rival club. ‘It was a different time and a woman in the boardroom was unheard of. A lot of the directors would have been of a certain age then, and we’re talking more than 30 years ago, so you can imagine the attitudes and comments from some.
‘She needed to be a strong character to deal with that,’ explains one former chairman at a rival club. ‘It was a different time and a woman in the boardroom was unheard of’
‘But she changed things. And people liked her because you knew where you stood. You knew what Birmingham’s position was because she wasn’t afraid to tell you. The club were a basket case when she got there and she left it in a much better place.’
While sections of their fanbase may disagree, there is a strong case to be made in that she has done likewise at West Ham. There have been numerous blunders over managerial appointments but the new stadium has added tens of thousands of season-ticket holders and there has also been a taste of success for the first time in four decades, thanks to the 2023 Conference League triumph. Brady was always viewed as someone who worked on the business, rather than the football side.
She will, indeed, be missed by some in east London, and that emotion will be replicated across the city in Paddington, at Premier League headquarters. According to those with knowledge of the shareholder meetings, where clubs sit down around five or six times per season to thrash out agreements, Brady was one of an ever-decreasing number of attendees who felt confident enough to contribute.
‘Ironically, she was one of few with the b****cks to speak up,’ explains a senior official from another club. ‘There are so many jobsworths in the room now who are frightened of saying anything in case it causes them a problem.
‘That was never Karren. She was smart and straightforward and if she had a view she was not afraid to express it. She didn’t see herself as an ambassador for women but she was that because she was fearless in a male-dominated environment. She will be a loss to Premier League meetings and a loss to football.’
Viewers of The Apprentice have had the occasional glimpse of a sense of humour those who know her describe as ‘seriously dry’. In this season’s finale she bluntly told one candidate that his ideas were ‘c**p’.
‘That’s her,’ the source explained. ‘She was quick to cut people down to size if she thought they were bull****ting’.
A former colleague agrees: ‘She was on top of everything and would quickly cut through the nonsense. If she’d asked you to sort something she’d chase it up and make sure you’d done it. Once someone told her they had sent an email to someone to fix a problem she had identified. She asked them to go and print it out and show her – she had an incredible knack of knowing when people were not telling the truth.’
‘She was smart, straightforward and if she had a view was not afraid to express it. She did not see herself as an ambassador but she was fearless in a male-dominated environment’
Brady negotiated a stunning agreement which saw West Ham move from their traditional 35,000 capacity-home to a sweeping 62,500 venue. Some call it the ‘deal of the century’
Very occasionally, there was a softer side. ‘If you worked hard then you had no problems,’ explains an insider. ‘And she could be quite caring. If someone left, for example, she would often send them a long note thanking them for their efforts.
‘Every now and then she would come out for staff drinks and you would get a glimpse of her humour. She would have a glass of something but she would always be on it and in control. She rarely let her guard down.’
Again, it would appear that appearance was essential. Recently, Brady, now a grandmother, has faced speculation that a dramatic weight loss had been triggered by jabs. In an interview with The Sun, for whom she is a columnist, she insisted the transformation had come via a controlled diet and regular exercise.
There have been previous visits to the Dr Rita Rakus Clinic in London for a variety of laser facials. Brady says she draws the line at fillers but has undergone non-surgical facelifts which use Ultrasound to reduce lines.
‘I’ve had a bit of Botox (in the past), but I do like my forehead to move and I can’t stand that rubber-faced look,’ she said.
As many who have faced her in negotiations would testify, she was always difficult to read.
