As one of the UK’s hardest-working women, does Karren Brady (pictured) have a relaxation regime to match? No chance – love for the job and precious weekends with her family are all this wonder woman needs.

Karren kicked off her career in the late 1980s at Saatchi & Saatchi, rapidly moving onwards and upwards before becoming managing director of Birmingham City Football Club in 1993, aged just 23.

Under her, Birmingham City FC began recording profits for the first time ever and when she floated the club on the stock market a few years later, she became the youngest-ever managing director of a UK PLC.

Since then, her fingers have been in many pies – multi-million pound businesses (the company she sold in 2009 was valued at more than £82 million), writing (she’s published four books and writes columns for a national newspaper and magazine), TV work (most famously as one of Alan Sugar’s sidekicks on BBC1’s The Apprentice), and she took over as vice chairman of West Ham United FC in 2010.

One of the most important deals she’s negotiating these days, though, is a deal many will relate to – parenting a teenage daughter.

“I still look at my daughter and see her as six,” she says of the 18-year-old. “She sees herself as an independent, feisty woman who can do what she wants. It’s getting that balance between adult and child, it’s really difficult.”

Talking about her children, Karren, who also has a 15-year-old son with her husband, Canadian footballer Paul Peschisolido, is full of warmth and pride when she mentions her son’s rugby talent and her daughter’s university plans.

Karren, 45, is convinced that her achievements are more about hard work, good attitude and good fortune than being bright.

“When I left school at 18, all I really had were my core values, things like determination, enthusiasm, the ability to work hard, the ability to mix,” she says.

She works long hours so she can be at home on Friday, Saturdays and Sundays.

If she’s not at the football, weekends are “all about spending time with the family, relaxing, and cooking”.

She famously returned to work just two days after having her daughter, but there isn’t a hint of guilt when she admits she never switches her phone off, and answers e-mails at 2am.

“When you run a business and employ 800 people you have to be accessible,” she says.

So does she balance out all that hard work with relaxation regimes? Regular spa visits, perhaps?

“I can’t stand stuff like that!” she responds. Her only “indulgence” is having her hair dyed.

In 2006, a routine MRI scan revealed a potentially fatal aneurysm in Karren’s brain and she underwent urgent neurosurgery. She was 36.

“It made me realise that life’s short. All the things you put off doing because you think you can do them another time, there may not be another time,” she says. “And it helped put things into perspective, you know, what’s important, what isn’t important.”