Lily Allen’s celeb friends fear she’ll spill their secrets online

It all began with a girly chat at Soho’s exclusive Groucho club.

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

‘I’ve lost three-quarters of a stone of my baby weight,’ she proudly told me back in 2013, with actress friend Sadie Frost at her side.

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

This was certainly one of the more innocuous anecdotes that a blase Lily shared that evening – and I chose to write it up in my newspaper gossip column without a second thought.

Hours after the story was published, however, I woke up to a social media onslaught. Hundreds of her followers were attacking me online, calling me rude names and lambasting me for my ‘poor journalism’.

It soon became clear that Lily had lashed out, brazenly posting online that I had made the whole story up – without sparing a thought for the consequences of her claims.

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

And though she has usually launched her attacks on Twitter and Instagram, and even from her own blog on the now-defunct MySpace, today she’s got a brand-new platform to air her grievances.

In March, she launched a hotly-anticipated BBC podcast Miss Me? alongside her oldest friend Miquita Oliver – whose mum, TV chef Andi Oliver, is a close friend of Lily’s mother Alison Owen. The pair have been friends since they were babies.

Indeed, Lily has been steeped in the world of showbiz since she was a child. Her father, the actor Keith Allen, has always brought her along to star-studded events and festivals.

During her 20-year showbusiness career, the singer has enjoyed close friendships with many celebrities, including everyone from model Cara Delevingne to One Direction singers Harry Styles and Liam Payne and popstar Rita Ora. Yet despite that, her vicious tirades on social media are something that her pals fear.

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

‘She has spent time with loads of people and she just won’t hold back. Lily and Miquita’s podcast is so popular now. She speaks her mind, which is always something to be applauded, but for the person on the receiving end, it is deeply unpleasant.’

Just ask James Corden. He was said to be ‘furious’ when Lily called him her ‘famous beg friend’ (someone who ‘begs’ for attention in the hope of forming a friendship).

Lily told her listeners: ‘[He] came on my chat show and was very flirtatious with me, and we sort of made friends and I introduced him to a group of my friends.’

Even Sir Elton John hasn’t escaped her wrath. In another recent episode of her podcast, Lily revealed that she ‘resented’ the Rocket Man singer after they parted ways in the music industry.

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

Describing how she eventually left his company, the singer said she wrote Sir Elton a ‘vulnerable’ letter, but got no response.

‘I was quite cross with him for a few years. I thought it was mean of him,’ she revealed. She subsequently admitted she had found the letter in one of her suitcases and had forgotten to send it to him.

And in April, she took aim at pop queen Beyonce – who most daren’t criticise – for releasing a cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene.

‘It’s very weird that you’d cover the most successful songs in that genre,’ Lily said, before announcing only 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 some stuff out [to] see if it works. I do love country and Western music,’ she told them.

And just last week Lily – mum to daughters Ethel, 12, and Marnie, 11 by 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 her and her children’s passports.

The comment sparked a furious response from Peta: ‘You laughed when speaking about abandoning Mary and ruined this poor dog’s life. She thought she had a loving forever home before you tossed her out, calling her “that f****** dog” who “ruined my life”. Shame on you. You don’t deserve even the toy dog we sent you.’

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

Even without her new podcast, Lily has found starting fights with fellow stars all too easy.

She arrived on the music scene back in 2006 when her debut single Smile went straight to No1. She had her own style – a dress teamed with trainers (revolutionary at the time) – and quickly became one of London’s most prolific party girls.

One night, I watched her screaming at journalists after a drink or two too many at the GQ Awards at the Royal Opera House. On other occasions, I spotted her skulking around Camden looking rather worse for wear.

Lily later confessed to using the illicit party drug ketamine and recounted how she consumed so many drugs during one glitzy London ceremony that she had to be carried out and loaded, comatose, into the back of a taxi. In 2015, she collapsed at Glastonbury and had to be treated by paramedics.

And as time went by, she became famous for her nasty attacks on other celebrities.

Unprovoked, in 2007 Lily branded Victoria Beckham ‘fame obsessed’.

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 you being famous.” I don’t understand the need to just be famous.’

Then there is her well-known feud with Cheryl Tweedy, formerly Cole. It began in 2006 when Lily name-checked the then 23-year-old on a song, unambiguously titled Cheryl Tweedy.

The lyrics said: ‘I wish my life was a little less seedy. Why am I always so greedy? Wish I looked just like Cheryl Tweedy.’

She later wrote: ‘Cheryl, I don’t really 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 responded by called her a ‘chick with a d***’, Lily replied on her blog: ‘I must say taking your clothes off, doing sexy dancing and marrying a rich footballer must be very gratifying, your mother must be so proud, stupid b****.’

One former friend of Lily’s says she starts toxic online rows for ‘attention’. Others insist that she just doesn’t see why she ‘shouldn’t speak the truth’.

‘Lily finds so much of this celebrity thing so fake,’ says a pal. ‘She likes to call it out. There is such a facade about it but she has grown up with fame and sees it for what it is.

‘She can’t help herself.’

What is so surprising is that Lily is still embroiling herself in such childish spats, despite undergoing a startling reinvention in recent years.

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

In a move that nobody could have predicted back in the mid-Noughties, the slimmed-down Lily is now a sought-after fashion promoter – having been hired by Fendi’s artistic director Kim Jones, (Victoria Beckham’s best friend). She was also paid a five-figure sum by Dior to post pictures of its products on social media.

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

‘She has transformed in every way, she has stopped drinking, doesn’t touch drugs, she dresses in the most beautiful clothes and she is a West End star,’ says one source familiar with Lily’s life.

‘In every aspect of her life she’s so classy, but when it comes to keeping her mouth shut, she just can’t. She jokes she’s a motor-mouth and she has no intention of ever stopping.’

No wonder her celebrity friends will be waiting anxiously for each new episode of her podcast.