She has described, in excoriating detail, her split from her Stranger Things star husband David Harbour in her recent hit album.
But Lily Allen has repaired another relationship with an important man in her life – her estranged father Keith Allen.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the popstar extended an olive branch to the Welsh actor and comedian in the wake of her acrimonious divorce, and invited him to attend a gig in Bristol during her tour last week.
The star, 72, who appeared in the BBC’s Bodies and the 1994 film Shallow Grave, joined an intimate circle of friends and family in the front row of her concert at the Bristol Beacon on Tuesday alongside her film producer mother Alison Owen and her partner Aaron Bateman. They were joined by Lily’s eldest daughter Marnie, 13.
Onlookers described the gathering as ‘warm and relaxed’ and said Keith – once accused of being jealous of Lily’s fame – posed happily with fans for snaps in the venue.
Sources close to the singer say inviting her father to the event, which comes after years of not speaking, signals a thaw in what has been a famously complicated family dynamic.
Lily, 40, has previously been candid about her strained relationship with her father. She once described him as ‘narcissistic and cold’.
Recalling her childhood with her Game of Thrones actor brother Alfie, Lily has said: ‘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”.
Lily, 40, has previously been candid about her strained relationship with her father, once describing him as ‘narcissistic and cold’
Lily wore a crop top and pink fur-trimmed jacket inspired by her on-set costume on Friday night
‘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 has also spoken about happier periods, including trips to football matches in her teenage years.
‘I was close with him and in my teenage years I really wanted to forge a relationship, 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 has said.
But their relationship again became strained when she hit adulthood. In her 2018 memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, she described how Keith suffered a ‘cocaine-induced heart attack’ at Glastonbury when she was 13.
But her recollections caused their relationship to cool after Keith insisted it was, in fact, food poisoning.
It led to a tense few years and ahead of her West End debut in 2:22 A Ghost Story in 2021, she said: ‘The last time I texted him was on Father’s Day and he texted back “Thank you”. We haven’t connected for a while.’
Lily has long described her stepfather, Aaron Bateman, as ‘the main male person in my life that is great and supportive to me’.
In the past year, Lily has been navigating the split from her husband, Stranger Things star Harbour, and a move back to London from New York, where she lived with him and her two daughters from her first marriage.
Her latest album, West End Girl, described the breakdown of their relationship and Harbour’s alleged affair with a woman she called ‘Madeline’. It received three nominations at this year’s Brit Awards.
On Friday night, her album tour shifted to the London Palladium and about 150 fans waited in chilly temperatures to grab a glimpse of her at the end of the gig.
Wearing a crop top and pink fur-trimmed jacket inspired by her on-set costume, Lily signed autographs and posed for pictures before leaving in a taxi with boyfriend Jonah Freud.
