Lily Allen's friends fear her dreams of a happy family life are doomed - as they reveal the REAL reason for her wild nights out: KATIE HIND
Considering the traumas she had already endured, Lily Allen’s first wedding day was cause enough for tears of joy all round.
But when the pop star chose a moment during the wedding breakfast, alongside new husband Sam Cooper, to announce she was three months pregnant, many of her friends couldn’t contain themselves.
It was June 2011 and Lily, then 26, was emotionally bruised. Just six months earlier, she had suffered a miscarriage. But the years before then had been nothing short of hedonistic, with a level of alcohol and drug abuse that would have been all too familiar to a daughter of the hellraising comedian Keith Allen. The apple certainly hadn’t fallen too far from the tree.
Those close to Lily say that her childhood had been so fractured, with so little security, that she had always struggled to find happiness. But now, with her new husband, a successful builder, at her side – and evidently thrilled to be expecting – friends thought their fears for her wellbeing could finally be put to rest.
Her daughter Ethel was born six months after the wedding, followed quickly by a second daughter named Marnie, and the family appeared to settle contentedly in the Cotswolds.
But just five years later, Lily and Sam separated, and ended up co-parenting their children in a ‘week on, week off’ cycle.
Lily later admitted that she had cheated on Sam during the tour for her third album Sheezus in 2014, sleeping with female escorts because she felt ‘lost and lonely’.
Extraordinarily, she said that at the time it didn’t feel like it was cheating because she was sleeping with women.
The troubled singer baring her soul on her popular podcast, Miss Me?
Pop star Lily Allen in her hedonistic days, knocking back a drink on stage at a festival in Wales
Lily with her first husband Sam Cooper, on their wedding day in 2011. She was three months pregnant at the time
Young mum Lily with her two children, Ethel and Marnie
‘I was in hotel rooms and was feeling quite lonely and had been drinking a lot. Usually drugs and alcohol seem to sustain something in me, and it didn’t feel like anything was working any more,’ she said.
Her marriage ending was precisely what Lily had never wanted her children to experience. It was a repeat of her own upbringing, of being moved from ‘pillar to post’ as one former associate of the star puts it, after her parents – her mother is film producer Alison Owen – divorced. Their separation had made her so unhappy that Lily always insisted she would never let her own daughters endure such a difficult upbringing.
One can only imagine her distress, then, as she once again heads for the divorce courts after splitting from her second husband, actor David Harbour.
For her daughters, now 13 and 12, it is the second time their lives have been uprooted – this time, however, perhaps more traumatically, as they had moved to the US after their mother began dating the American star.
The girls are said to be ‘extremely fond’ of David, whom their mum first met on celebrity dating app Raya in 2019, and married in Las Vegas a year later.
Ethel and Marnie had, say friends, settled in the trendy New York suburb of Brooklyn, but will now face further upheaval. The likelihood is they will return to London, where their mother has recently bought a flat.
Following weeks of speculation, Lily, 39, confirmed on her much-listened to podcast Miss Me? on Thursday that she and Harbour had separated.
Talking to her co-host and best friend TV presenter Miquita Oliver, she said: ‘I’m finding it hard to be interested in anything. I’m really not in a good place. I know I’ve been talking about it for months, but I’ve been spiralling and spiralling. It’s got out of control. I can’t concentrate on anything except the pain I’m going through. It’s really hard.’
US actor David Harbour and Lily Allen are going their separate ways after four years of marriage
She also told how she needed ‘time out’ after struggling with panic attacks.
The couple separated after Lily discovered Stranger Things actor David, 49, was again using the dating app Raya.
Single once again, friends now tell me they fear for her wellbeing, and question whether she can ever really be truly content, something they trace back to her own anxious childhood.
Soon after Lily’s birth in 1985, actor Keith began an affair with a brigadier’s wife who lived near the set of a film he was working on in Dorset. By 1989, the marriage to Alison had run its course and he walked out on her, when Lily was just four.
‘Lily was moved around when she was a little girl,’ says one friend. ‘To have your dad walk out is something that is hard to get over. Her father had gone from her life on a day-to-day basis.
‘It was left to her mum to bring her up, but with a hellraiser for a father it was hard to learn things like loyalty. She found it really hard to ever stick at anything – men, jobs, managers, the lot.’
Indeed, her deep insecurities over her upbringing also became a constant source of worry for music industry figures overseeing her recording career.
‘It wasn’t easy at all,’ says one former executive. ‘Lily would pour her heart out to you about how messed up her family life was when she was growing up.
‘You become used to artists sometimes being quite needy, but with Lily it was nearly always like she was looking for help with problems stemming back to the start of her life.
‘She’d be quite open about how hurt she was, how let down [she was] by her father Keith, and how tough it was for her mother, and also for her brother.
‘But there came a point on lots of occasions where it was clear Lily was looking for some kind of professional support, rather than concentrating on pursuing her music career.
‘It just wasn’t like the usual relationship someone working in the music industry would have with their artists. It would have been easy to take advantage of her state of mind.’
However, Lily is also known for her bolshy character and take-no-nonsense mantra.
‘She has always had to be tough and look after herself,’ says a former colleague. ‘She could be mean, though she also had a kind heart, one that could actually melt yours.’
Lily is also disarmingly candid about her own troubles, and has long been open about how her childhood continues to affect her today. Her fractious relationship with her father, now 70, is a common theme of her recollections about the troubles of her past.
Her comedian father Keith Allen, who walked out on Lily and her brother Alfie when she was just four
Lily and her father have had a troubled relationship, and both have admitted to extreme use of drink and drugs over the years
For example, she once recalled: ‘One of my earliest memories is of when Mum and Dad split up. We were in our council flat in Bloomsbury and Dad was saying, “Me and Mum are splitting up now.” I was about four and I was thinking, “Does that mean we’ve got to look for a new dad?”
‘It was very hard for Mum. She was producing her first film and my younger brother, Alfie, was a difficult kid. I just lived within my own brain. I had this blanket and I’d suck my thumb and watch the world go by.’
Then, when Lily was just eight, she walked into the bathroom to find her mother screaming on the floor with empty bottles of alcohol and pills around her. She was taken to rehab shortly afterwards.
Lily’s feeling of abandonment persisted into adulthood. In 2015, she tweeted: ‘My dad walked out on me when I was four, I’m sick of this. My dad was at Latitude when I headlined and didn’t even come to see me. I’ve probably spent more time walking my dogs than I have with my dad my entire life.’
However, her feelings towards her father are complex – she has also recounted better times with him, including regular trips to football matches.
‘I was close with him and in my teenage years I really wanted to forge a relationship with him, so I used to go and watch Fulham play every Saturday with him and his mates, and things were really good at a certain point,’ she once said.
Football aside, a tendency to party hard was certainly inherited from Keith. While today she is sober and clean, one ex-colleague told how Lily would often want to go out – and stay out – in a bid to ease her loneliness.
The source said on occasion Lily would expect those working on her music with her to join her on wild nights partying.
‘She had this way of making you feel like you were letting her down if you didn’t agree to meet up with her that night in Soho, or wherever, for a drink,’ they said. ‘She clearly needed the company, the friendship and reassurance that she didn’t get at home when she was younger.
‘I’d join her for a drink on several occasions. But at the back of my mind there was always the need to get myself out of the situation – while also making sure Lily didn’t get herself into any harm.’
Now she’s once again navigating the pain of a divorce – and, presumably, fears for her own children’s wellbeing – those close to her will once again be watching Lily carefully, hoping she can endure yet another crisis at home.
