Lily Allen hasn’t ever been a stranger to controversy during her time in the pop limelight and tabloid headlines.
Even today (Friday May 2), as she turns 40, the twice-married singer is risking censure from Instagram (for posing in sheer underwear, rather than wishing herself happy birthday) instead of blowing out candles on a cake.
So, as the Smile star enters her fifth decade on the planet, ED! takes a look back at some of Lily‘s biggest-ever scandals. How many can you remember?
Lily Allen scandals: ‘Losing her virginity aged 12’
Appearing on Alan Carr’s Life’s A Beach podcast in 2023, Lily shared the shocking revelation she lost her virginity on holiday when she was just aged 12. She also said her father Keith Allen called the police when he found out.
“I lost my virginity to a guy called Fernando in Brazil,” she recalled. “When I was about 12, no I am not joking. Never spoke to him again.”
Lily continued: “[My family] thought I actually went missing. I went to his hotel room, and I was on holiday with my dad and brother, and obviously didn’t come back to my room.”
Lily added she slept in the next day – but woke to find “police all over the hotel”.
“They were literally combing the beach and had T-shirts, asking: ‘Is this what she was wearing?’ I didn’t have the heart to say: ‘No, I was just losing my virginity.’ It was all a bit traumatic, and I didn’t have sex again then for a while.”
‘Slept with dad’s friend at 14’
Lily has also previously claimed to have slept with a famous friend of her father’s when she was 14.
She recalled in her book My Thoughts Exactly in 2018 – and accused Keith of making light of the matter.
Lily wrote she met the unnamed male celebrity in a hotel bar after returning his kit following a charity football match.
He is said to have bought her drinks before taking her to a room and having sex with her.
“I was 14. He was 19, but to me he seemed like someone from a different generation,” Lily wrote. “Afterwards, I felt funny about it. I knew what had happened wasn’t right.”
She also claimed that when he found out, her dad “turned it into a shtick with his friends.”
Lily continued: “They made up elaborate schemes to blackmail the guy and they rehearsed how they’d call him up and put the [blank] up him. I just know that my dad turned me having sex with this guy I hardly knew into a joke between him and his mates. That didn’t make me feel good.”
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‘I slept with female escorts when I was on tour’
In 2018, Lily addressed hiring female escorts for sex while on tour following the breakdown of her first marriage.
“I slept with female escorts when I was on tour, cause I was lost and lonely and looking for something,” she told her Instagram followers in September of that year.
Lily was married to Sam Cooper from 2011 until their divorce in 2018. They share two daughters together.
But while Lily initially struggled to explain why she turned to women after her split from Sam during an Aussie radio interview, she later confessed to searching for an “outlet”.
“It was more about a period of time that I was feeling incredibly lonely and sort of at my wit’s end,” she said at the time.
“I was looking for anything. Looking for an outlet. It’s not really a salacious sex story, it’s more about hotel rooms and being on my own and being very far away from my kids and my husband.”
Lily Allen scandals: ‘Mile high club with Liam Gallagher’
In March 2019, Lily claimed once again she and Oasis star Liam Gallagher had a “seven hour thing” while flying to Japan.
She had already written about the alleged incident in My Thoughts Exactly. But Lily expanded on the details when she appeared on The Big Narstie Show.
“You know, we met in the lounge before we got on the plane and you know, got quite drunk and then… yeah,” she uttered.
Lily also joked: “It was a Champagne Supernova in the sky!”
In her book, she described the setup for her encounter with the married rocker as taking place after they “got hammered on the plane.”
She went on: “At some point, Liam and I found ourselves together in the toilet doing something that he shouldn’t have been doing, and it wasn’t drugs.
“Then we were in a lie-down bed together. When we landed in Tokyo, Liam said, in his distinctive nasal twang, ‘What you doing now? Why don’t you come back to our hotel’… I was like, ‘Yeah, OK’.”
Claimed ‘kids ruined her career’
In March 2024, it was reported Lily indicated that motherhood stalled her music career.
Eldest daughter Ethel Mary was born in 2011, while Marnie Rose arrived into the world in 2013.
Speaking on the Radio Times Podcast, Lily said frankly: “My children ruined my career.”
“I love them and they complete me, but in terms of pop stardom, they totally ruined it,” she went on.
I get really annoyed when people say you can have it all because, quite frankly, you can’t.
A frustrated Lily added: “I get really annoyed when people say you can have it all because, quite frankly, you can’t.”
Lily Allen scandals: ‘Returned dog to shelter after it ate passports’
Meanwhile, in August of last year, Lily admitted she and husband David Harbour had returned the pooch they’d taken in.
Speaking on her podcast Miss Me?, Lily said the dog “ruined her life” after it chomped the family’s passports.
“‘The dog] ate all three of our passports and they had our visas in. And I cannot tell you how much money it cost me to get everything replaced, because it was in Covid and so it was just an absolute logistical nightmare,” Lily bleated.
She went on: “And because the father of my children lives in England, I couldn’t take them back to see their dad for like four months, five months, because this [expletive] dog had eaten the passports. And I just couldn’t look at her. I was like: ‘You’ve ruined my life.'”
Happy birthday Lils!
Read more: Lily Allen shows off results from ‘incredible’ boob job
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