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Lily Allen has recalled the moment she took out “petty” revenge on an A-lister back in the early years of her career when she was managed by Elton John’s company.
The 39-year-old British singer-songwriter, who celebrated five years of sobriety in April, shared that, at the time, she had been invited to John’s house in the South of France to “dry out for a couple of weeks.”
“And while I was there I got a phone call from somebody very famous at the time asking me if I could perform at a charity event that they were involved in; she was asking me to sing a song with her boyfriend, who was a musician,” Allen recounted on a new episode of her BBC Miss Me? podcast.
Without naming the person, Allen described the woman as being “quite a lot older than me and a lot more famous and more successful.”
After Allen told the couple that she didn’t think she would have time to rehearse because she was in the South of France, she remembered the woman telling her not to worry, that they would fly out and rehearse with her there.
“They come to the South of France, they arrive, and it’s like late afternoon and she’s like, ‘I think you guys should sing [Simon & Garfunkel’s] ‘The Sound Of Silence’. And I was like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know about that, I really don’t want to – that’s out of my comfort zone’. And she got the right hump,” the “Smile” singer said.
Allen explained that she then suggested they sing Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s 1967 version of “Somethin’ Stupid.”
“I said, ‘Look, I’ll go downstairs with your boyfriend and we’ll practice the song and then we’ll come up and we’ll sing it for you and see how you feel about it,” the Grammy-nominated artist continued, adding: “She grabbed by arm and said, ‘If you think I’m leaving you alone with my f***ing boyfriend you’ve got another thing coming.’”
Allen continued: “And I just thought, ‘I’m stranded and you’ve got me snookered, but I was just like, ‘I’m banking this feeling and I will remember it and get you back one day.’”
Allen’s podcast co-host and childhood friend Miquita Oliver laughingly noted that taking someone aside to a separate room used to be Allen’s move back in “those days when [she] wanted to get with someone.”
The “Not Fair” singer argued that the “boyfriend was not someone I found remotely attractive and she was incredibly beautiful – still is – and so should not have found me remotely a threat.”
Weeks after the charity event, Allen said she was asked by an awards ceremony if she would be the recipient of a “prestigious award.”
After happily accepting the honor, she was asked if there was anyone she’d like to present her with the award.
“And I was like, ‘At what point in the proceedings does this award get awarded?’ and they were like, ‘It’s the penultimate award,’ and I was like, ‘There is no way that this person will be able to hold themselves together for that long and if I can stay sober, then she’ll have to present me with the award while I’m looking pristine and brilliant and she looks completely f***ed up,’ and it f***ing worked!” Allen exclaimed.
“Front cover of the papers the next day were like, ‘So-and-so is a complete mess’ and then pictures of me and my award.”
Acknowledging that what she did “was particularly petty,” Allen clarified that now, she really likes the person and that that moment in time was “a particularly bad phase that both of us were going through.”
“All is forgiven, on my part anyway,” she said.
