How Lily Allen’s social media outbursts have left her famous friends fearing she’ll spill all her dirty secrets online and on her hit podcast

It all started with a women’s talk at the exclusive Groucho club in Soho.

Singer Lily Allen, then 28 and at the height of her fame, was regaling me with stories about her newfound fondness for Barry’s Bootcamp, the hot new fitness fad that had just arrived in the UK from Hollywood.

“I’ve lost three-quarters of my baby weight,” she told me proudly in 2013, with actress friend Sadie Frost by her side.

‘The weight is coming off but it’s hard work. I’ve been going to Barry’s Bootcamp for a while now with a couple of friends. I hope he can lose more.’

This was without a doubt one of the most innocuous anecdotes that a blasphemous Lily shared that night, and I chose to write it in the gossip column of my newspaper without a second thought.

Hours after the story was published, however, I woke up to a social media attack. Hundreds of his followers attacked me online, calling me rude names and criticizing my ‘poor journalism’.

It soon became clear that Lily had lashed out, brazenly posting online that I had made up the whole story, without thinking about the consequences of her claims.

Eleven years later, Lily, who is now 39, might have undergone a total image makeover – the former drug addict ladette is sought after by high fashion houses – but it’s clear she still finds it impossible to bite her tongue on social media.

And while he often launches his attacks on Twitter and Instagram, and even from his own blog on the now-defunct MySpace, today he has a brand new platform to air his grievances.

In March, he launched a long-awaited BBC podcast, Miss Me? alongside her oldest friend Miquita Oliver, whose mother, TV chef Andi Oliver, is close friends with Lily’s mother, Alison Owen. The couple have been friends since they were babies.

In fact, Lily has been immersed in show business since she was a child. Her father, actor Keith Allen, always took her to star-studded events and festivals.

During her 20-year career in show business, the singer has maintained close friendships with many celebrities, including from model Cara Delevingne to One Direction singers Harry Styles and Liam Payne and pop star Rita Ora. However, despite this, his vicious rants on social media are something his friends fear.

“Lily has had so many friendships with so many stars and they just don’t know when she’s going to come out and pop them,” says one celebrity who wishes not to be named.

“She’s spent time with a lot of people and she just won’t stop. Lily and Miquita’s podcast is so popular now. She speaks her mind, which is always something to applaud, but to the person on the receiving end, it’s deeply unpleasant.

Ask James Corden. He was said to be “furious” when Lily called him her “famous beggar friend” (someone who “begs” for attention in the hope of forming a friendship).

Lily told her listeners: “[He] she came on my chat show and was really flirty with me and we became friends and i introduced her to a bunch of my friends.

Not even Sir Elton John escaped his wrath. In another recent episode of her podcast, Lily revealed that she was “resentful” of the Rocket Man singer after they parted ways in the music industry.

Lily explained that she was managed by a company she owned for a few years, and they would talk regularly.

Describing how she eventually left her company, the singer said she wrote Sir Elton a “vulnerable” letter but got no response.

“I was quite angry with him for a few years. I thought I was mean to him,” she revealed. He later admitted that he had found the letter in one of his suitcases and had forgotten to send it.

And in April, he took aim at pop queen Beyonce, who most don’t dare criticize, for releasing a version of Dolly Parton’s Jolene.

“It’s very rare that you cover the most successful songs in that genre,” said Lily, before announcing just weeks later during a guest appearance on a podcast with DJ Nick Grimshaw and chef Angela Hartnett that she (itals) was experimenting with the genre herself. . ‘I’m just, you know, trying a few things [to] let’s see if it works. I love country and western music,” he told them.

And just last week Lily, mum to daughters Ethel, 12, and Marnie, 11, with first husband Sam Cooper, became embroiled in a row with animal charity Peta after she admitted on her podcast that she adopted a rescue puppy, Mary, from a shelter. – then returned the animal when it chewed up her and her children’s passports.

The comment prompted an angry response from Peta: “You laughed when you talked about abandoning Mary and you ruined this poor dog’s life. She thought she had a loving forever home before you dumped her, calling her ‘that fucking dog’ that” he ruined my life.” Shame on you. You don’t even deserve the toy dog ​​we sent you.”

Lily responded by writing: “People laugh when they talk about painful things all the time, it’s quite normal. I clarified that we didn’t abandon her and she was relocated with people we knew almost immediately.”

Even without her new podcast, Lily has found it very easy to start fights with stars.

She hit the music scene in 2006 when her debut single Smile went straight to No. 1. She had her own style – a dress paired with sneakers (revolutionary at the time) – and quickly became one of London’s most prolific partiers.

One night, I came to shout at reporters after a drink or two too many at the GQ Awards at the Royal Opera House. On other occasions, I’ve found him lurking around Camden looking rather worse for wear.

Lily later confessed to using the illicit party drug ketamine and told how she consumed so much of the drug during a glitzy ceremony in London that she had to be carried and loaded, in a coma, into the back of a taxi. In 2015, she collapsed at Glastonbury and had to be treated by paramedics.

And over time, she became famous for her nasty attacks on other celebrities.

Without provocation, in 2007 Lily dismissed Victoria Beckham as “obsessed with fame”.

She said: “I just laugh when I see pictures of her in a magazine. I think, ‘You’re not promoting anything and you don’t need the money, so it’s all about being famous’. I don’t understand the need to be famous.”

Then there’s his well-known feud with Cheryl Tweedy, formerly Cole. It started in 2006 when Lily name-checked the then 23-year-old in a song, unmistakably titled Cheryl Tweedy.

The lyrics read: “I wish my life was a little less crappy. Why am I always so greedy? I wish I looked like Cheryl Tweedy.

He later wrote: “Cheryl, I really don’t want to look like you. I was being ironic. Nobody really wants to look like you, they just think they do.’

When the Girls Aloud singer hit back by calling her a ‘chick with ad***’, Lily replied on her blog: ‘I must say taking your clothes off, dancing sexy and marrying a rich footballer must be very rewarding, your mum must be very rewarding .be so proud, stupid bitch.

An old friend of Lily’s says she starts toxic rows online for “attention”. Others insist that she simply doesn’t see why she “shouldn’t tell the truth.”

“Lily finds a lot of these celebrities so fake,” says a friend. ‘He likes to call it. There is a facade like that, but she grew up with fame and sees it for what it is.

“She can’t help herself.”

What’s so surprising is that Lily is still getting into these kinds of childish fights, despite undergoing an amazing reinvention in recent years.

She split from husband Sam Cooper in 2018 after seven years together. She is now happily married to American actor David Harbour, 49, who stars in the hit Netflix show Stranger Things.

In a move no one could have predicted in the mid-1990s, the slimmed-down Lily is now an in-demand fashion promoter, being hired by Fendi’s artistic director Kim Jones (Victoria Beckham’s best friend). Dior also paid a five-figure sum to post images of its products on social media.

And after starring in Martin McDonagh’s hit play The Pillowman in the West End last month, Lily was spotted leaving the Duke of York theater dressed head to toe in designer clothes by Chanel and Elie Saab.

“She’s transformed in every way, she’s stopped drinking, doesn’t touch drugs, dresses in the cutest clothes and is a West End star,” says a source familiar with Lily’s life.

“In every aspect of his life he’s so classy, ​​but when it comes to keeping his mouth shut, he just can’t. He jokes that he’s a biker and has no intention of ever stopping.

It’s no wonder her celebrity friends are eagerly awaiting every new episode of her podcast.