By Marianka Swain.
Novelist Margaret Atwood memorably described divorce as “like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you”.
Stranger Things actor David Harbour might well relate to that sentiment this week after his soon-to-be-ex-wife Lily Allen stuck the knife in via her brutally confessional revenge album West End Girl, which was teeming with salacious revelations – and, as a result, looks set to be a massive hit.
Allen, 40, spilled intimate details from the couple’s crumbling union, including the messy fallout of an unwanted open marriage and suspicions of sex addiction (she has described the lyrics as a “mixture of fact and fiction”).
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As fans eagerly play detective, matching up lyrics to reality – including a hunt for the real Madeline, the “other woman” in the song of the same name – Allen’s comeback album, her first in seven years, is skyrocketing. It had 3.7 million streams on Spotify just on the first day of release.
Allen has been rather less candid about what her children – Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12, from her previous marriage to builder Sam Cooper – think of this explosive album, or indeed Harbour, 50.
“I don’t know if I can answer that,” was all she would say when The Times asked her last week whether they had heard it.
One hopes that her children, at least, will skip the track Pussy Palace, in which the singer, who struggled with her open marriage (albeit one with strict parameters: discretion, and only encounters with paid strangers), discovers her partner has a secret hook-up spot where he keeps a bag full of “sex toys, butt plugs, lube” and a shoebox of letters “from broken-hearted women”.
The album is the artistic equivalent of a grenade with the pin yanked out and Allen seems to be welcoming the drama.
As she said to Perfect magazine: “If what you’re doing isn’t provocative, what’s the f—ing point?”
Those words are essentially the mission statement of a singer who has always fuelled her career with shocking pronouncements and scandalous behaviour, and made serious money doing it – she has an estimated £3 million ($6 million) net worth.
Allen is, as she herself puts it, “a well-documented nepo baby”: her father is actor Keith Allen, and, following their divorce, her mother Allison dated comedian Harry Enfield.
“She grew up in a very showbiz household,” says PR expert Mark Borkowski.
“She’s much like her dad Keith: he is very, very upfront, he doesn’t suffer fools or deal with any b—–ks.”
Allen was always “very feisty – the ultimate showbiz brat,” adds Borkowski. She certainly had a lengthy wild child phase.
In 2006 she told Uncut magazine: “I was a drug dealer in Ibiza at 15. I did not excel in drug-dealing – I was terrible at it. Golden rule with drug-dealing; don’t get too enthusiastic with your own merchandise.”
However, that was just the tip of the Allen iceberg. As she promoted her 2006 debut album Alright, Still, Allen hit the headlines for saying she would celebrate getting to number one by taking cocaine, and for calling Paris Hilton “hideously untalented”, adding: “If she’s rude to me I’ll punch her.”
She also labelled Madonna “overrated” and Victoria Beckham “fame-obsessed”, and revealed that she had snogged a female Stringfellows stripper when she was 15.
Allen dated Ed Simons from the Chemical Brothers and, she claimed at the time, had a miscarriage in 2008, though later admitted in her 2018 memoir My Thoughts Exactly that she’d had an abortion. Allen then spent three weeks in The Priory for depression.
None of that hurt her music career: quite the opposite. Alright, Still went quadruple platinum, selling more than 2.5 million copies worldwide, while lead single Smile went to number one. Handily, the brash, confessional lyrics of her songs matched her cheeky party girl persona perfectly; Smile begins “When you first left me / I was wanting more / But you were f—ing that girl next door”.
Allen was also something of a pioneer, points out Borkowski, in utilising social media. “She was ahead of her time in building up a huge following on MySpace.”
She has continued to talk frankly and directly to her audience, though it’s now mainly through her podcast Miss Me? which she has co-hosted with her friend Miquita Oliver since 2024.
“She understands the modern need for raw honesty,” says Borkowski. “She’s also got absolute Teflon skin, so she can handle any blowback.”
That’s just as well, since Allen has shared every eye-watering detail of her life. Speaking on her podcast earlier this year, she said: “I’d get pregnant all the time. Abortions, I’ve had a few, but then again, I can’t remember exactly how many […] I want to say four or five.”
Before becoming sober in 2019, Allen battled addiction to drugs and alcohol. One of her vices was the prescription drug Adderall, which, she recalled on The Recovery podcast in 2021, she took in order to lose weight when supporting Miley Cyrus on tour in 2014.
Her colourful romantic history features Harry Potter star Rupert Grint, art dealer Jay Jopling (who separated from his wife just prior to their reported fling), and Oasis rocker Liam Gallagher. In her memoir, Allen wrote that she and Gallagher got drunk on a plane to Japan in 2009 and joined the Mile High Club. Gallagher was married to All Saints singer Nicole Appleton at the time.
Additionally, although Harbour’s reported infidelity forms the furious basis of Allen’s latest album, she admitted in her memoir that she had paid for sex with female escorts while she was married to Cooper – though she later said on The Jonathan Ross Show that she didn’t see it as “cheating” because the escorts were women.
In 2018 actress Zoë Kravitz appeared on American TV show Watch What Happens Live. When asked about a story Allen tells in her book of her and Kravitz kissing while out partying, Kravitz gave her own non-consensual version of events, saying: “If by kissing she means attacking, then yes, she kissed me.”
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A year later, Allen was asked to respond during an interview with MTV saying only: “I can’t really speak for her. All I can say is my version of events, which didn’t match hers, clearly.”
Yet Allen’s fans continued to embrace her outrageous behaviour, and her similarly brazen music.
Her 2009 album It’s Not Me, It’s You sold over two million, 2014’s Sheezus hit number one, and 2018’s No Shame, which detailed her drug problems and the breakdown of her first marriage, became her fourth top-10 album.
Allen then took a break from music and turned to acting, starring in West End plays 2:22 A Ghost Story, The Pillowman and Hedda, plus TV comedy Dreamland, but she remained queen of the sensational headline.
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In 2020 she teamed up with company Womanizer to create her own sex toy, a clitoral pump called Liberty, and she led Womanizer’s #IMasterbate campaign.
Allen also ruffled feathers when she began selling pictures and videos of her feet on OnlyFans in 2024. It was a lucrative side hustle: Variety estimated she was earning around £7700 ($15,400) a month.
Now Allen is back in the music world, and just as provocative as ever – if not more.
“If you have success with something early on, you should carry on doing it,” says Borkowski.
“A lot of people aren’t that strong-willed, but Lily has stuck to her guns.”
It probably helps that by committing to her notorious, jaw-dropping brand, Allen stands out in a crowded market and looks to be heading for a massive payday. That’s dismaying news for Harbour: this won’t be the last we hear from the ever-controversial Allen.
© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2025
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