Rachel Brady doesn't look like your average physio, but nothing about the touchy-feely star of TV football fantasy Dream Team is ordinary, as we discover... Rachel Brady is the reason why every footballer needs a physiotherapist. She plays Abi Fletcher, the Harchester United team masseuse in the footballing drama Dream Team. The seventh series begins late next month on Sky One.
The bad news is that the 27-year-old Irish blonde is currently unavailable - in fact very unavailable - and that includes any approaches from glamorous, rich footballers, including her Arsenal favourite Freddie Ljungberg. Brady, who lives in North London, has been married for two years to the commercial photographer Neil Hurley, 33. She says it was a "whirlwind romance" and they found themselves engaged after only two months. Hurley, who literally went down on bended knee to make his proposal, clearly sensed a good catch, however much this may have disappointed Brady's growing legion of Dream Team fans. "Neil and I met through mutual friends in Dublin," she tells me, "and it just happened. As for the Dream Team fans, I'm married in the show anyway so that's a double disappointment. Sorry." And family? "No!" she shrieks. "I'm too young and busy enjoying myself."
As we talk, Brady is being photographed in the chic but bizarre London loft apartment owned by surrealist art collector and eccentric Jibby Bean. The flat is adorned - if that's the word - with an eye-popping display of arty nudity. The bedroom is decorated with huge wall-to-ceiling photographic panels of naked figures reposing behind net curtains. It's difficult to know where to look, until Brady sweeps down the staircase in a ivory-coloured busty outfit. Nothing like this has ever been seen in a footballer's dressing room before, and if it were, I doubt very much that Alex Ferguson would tolerate it. The photographer, the legendary Bob Carlos Clarke, who recently pubished his book Shooting Sex, sees Brady. "Hey, Marilyn!" he says enthusiastically. His comparison is not completely off-the-mark as Brady lounges across a white leather banquette - pushing aside several ceramic phallic symbols as she does. It's a highly charged atmosphere.
She tells me about her role as Abi Fletcher: "I guess you could say she's a nice character but with a hard streak. She was introduced in the last series of Dream Team. She met the striker Karl Fletcher (Fletch) - he's gorgeous, of course - when he was in hospital recovering from a crash. They got married very, very quickly, and she got a job at Harchester United. So they work together and play together. The only downside for Abi, and for me, is that I have to get too close to the footballers' smelly feet!" Brady says her character "gets challenged" a lot in the new series, but by whom and about what is not clear. "I have no idea how much I can tell you about Abi," she says, "so I won't tell you anything."
Brady grew up in Sandymount, Dublin, the eldest of five children. From the age of seven, she took part in a local theatre group, which gave her a passion for acting. After high school, she went to university and took a degree in communications - "I felt I had to do something sensible to fall back on." But anything sensible had to be postponed when she was offered a part in the hit Irish film I Went Down in 1997. The role was a springboard, and Brady then landed a series of presenting roles including stints on MTV and a powerboating series. "I really enjoyed presenting," she says. "You have so much fun but if you do anything for a set amount of time you start thinking, 'What can I do now?' And acting was what I always wanted to do, so I was put up for the Dream Team casting. But not everyone around her is happy. "My brothers John and Simon and sister Mariah are big fans. But when I was cast as Abi, Simon said, 'You've ruined my favourite show! What are you doing in it!'" It's an attitude that may put him in the minority.
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