BARONESS

Brady of Knightsbridge says she owes her successful career to the privations of boarding school.

The Apprentice star Karren Brady, 49, who attended Poles Convent, a boarding school in Ware, Hertfordshire, and Aldenham School, Elstree, a boys’ school that accepted girls in the sixthform, says: ‘I think my ambition and drive probably come from the fact I went to boarding school until the age of 18.

‘At boarding school, nothing is your own — you wear what you’re told, you eat what you’re given, you go to bed when you’re told and, frankly, you do what you’re told.

‘All I really wanted was my own independence. I knew that having your own independence came from making your own money, so I didn’t go to university — I went straight into work and a job and kept on with it.’

By 23, she was a football club boss.