Wish you were there? Brady’s girl hard at work in Dubai
ESCAPING to sunny skies, warm temperatures and blue waters is a frustratingly distant dream for anyone enduring lockdown.
But this is how businesswoman Karren Brady’s daughter Sophia Peschisolido has been spending the past month – soaking up the winter sun in Dubai.
The 24-year-old has shared scores of pictures of herself wearing bikinis in the Middle Eastern holiday hotspot.
Many of the photos are adverts for fashion brands including PrettyLittleThing and Boux Avenue which pay ‘influencers’ such as Ms Peschisolido for posts.
She was one of a number of social media and reality stars to flock to Dubai before Britain’s third lockdown began. Trips for work purposes were within the rules.
Ms Brady, 51, was also in Dubai last month, with her daughter. She told the Mail she had travelled there for business, leaving Britain on December 18 and returning ‘shortly afterwards’. She said that ‘no rules have been breached, by me or any member of my family’.
One picture Ms Peschisolido put on Instagram from last month shows her walking up the stairs at luxury restaurant Bagatelle Dubai with the caption: ‘Mum getting the angles in lol.’
Although it was uploaded on Christmas Eve, Ms Brady explained that ‘bears no relation to the dates I was in Dubai or the date the picture was taken’.
After Dubai was added to the UK’s travel corridor list in November, it became a playground for influencers keen to escape restrictions and seek out photo opportunities for their sponsorship deals. Many have faced a backlash for posting pictures of themselves sunbathing and enjoying nights out while Covid cases in the UK soared and people faced more and more curbs on their lives. Ms Peschisolido has been in Dubai since at least December 22, although there is no suggestion she broke the UK’s Tier Four rules to fly out. She did not respond for requests for comment yesterday. In November Ms Brady wrote an article for The Sun urging readers to be ‘sensible’ with regard to visiting family members amid the pandemic. The multi-millionairess, who took her seat in the British House of Lords in 2014, wrote: ‘This virus doesn’t know it’s Christmas. It won’t take a week off just so we can get together with our various beloveds.’
Last night she told the Mail: ‘I went to Dubai for business on the 18th and returned shortly afterwards. My children did not travel with me. I have not breached any government restrictions, to suggest otherwise would be totally incorrect.’
Under the current national UK lockdown, people are banned from going on holiday and can travel internationally only for work or other legally permitted reasons.
The United Arab Emirates was removed from the UK’s travel corridor list last Tuesday, just days ahead of the decision to close all corridors amid fears of new strains of the virus.
All travellers returning to the UK now need proof of a negative test and must quarantine for ten days, unless they test negative again after five days.