In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone down that road. But I’m here now. I couldn’t give up singing tomorrow and all the paps would leave me alone. I might as well make the most of it.

 

What do you want?

Do this four or five more years and then try to find someone to fall in love with, have another go at having children, and move somewhere else. If I had a partner, I’d move now.

 

Are you okay alone?

I have spent a lot of my life alone, so I should hope so. A lot of people are under the impression that the relationship [with Simons] ended against my will, which it didn’t. I couldn’t imagine being in that relationship.

What stands in the way of your happiness now? As a young child in a broken home, you’re made to feel it’s an awful, terrible thing going on. The reality is that it isn’t. Most people go through it. The 2. 4 children thing is a myth. I take my three-year-old goddaughter to school, and all the parents are still together. My friend’s daughter is eight, and they’re all just splitting up. By 12 years old, they’re all divorced. I’m still that little girl who wants to be loved and wants the attention of my mum and dad. I didn’t receive it, so I want to have a go at giving it to my kids. The album is about confronting those things: I know it’s wrong, but a part of me wants the ideal we’ve all been sold.

He is 15 years older than you. Is that significant? Maybe, but I tried seeing a 25-year-old a couple of weeks ago. It just wasn’t happening. It was like talking to a child. They think they know everything, and they’re just fucking idiots. I’d like to go out with someone who’s about 50 and recently divorced, if I’m honest. It’s a father thing, I suppose. Men who are emotionally immature and insecure, they just do my fucking head in. But a 50-year-old would be over that.

WHEN WE FINISH speaking, she seems quiet, reflective. But Allen slips into an alternate mode quickly. She’s off to run an errand that would befit a society girl, getting some letterhead stationery made at a Mayfair printer’s. Tomorrow, she will

be part of a mass airlift of A-listers to Dubai for the opening of the $1.5 billion Palm Atlantis resort hotel, an event that will also be attended by Janet Jackson, Lindsay Lohan, and Robert De Niro, and involve Kylie Minogue playing an hour-long show for a reported $3 million. Since she had earlier talked about how a young generation of artists like herself were rebelling against “branding” and “money” and “bling,” this crass property-developmentendorsement during a global financial meltdown might seem an odd invitation for Allen to accept.

“My manager told me it would be a bit of a holiday,” she says with a shrug, before playfully jabbing me in the arm telling me not to “fuck her over” or make her look “like an idiot.”

“Be real, but don’t be mean,” she advises in the lobby as Israeli secret service agents swoop in, looking under tables urgently. “Say I’m a pugnacious pixie, but I’m quite nice in spite of it all,” she adds, swinging her black mane toward the guy with a machine gun by the hotel doors.

 

SHE’S COME UNDONE

The many headline-making moods of lily allen

CLOCK WISE FROM TOP LEF T: DOUG PE TERS/PA PHOTOS/LANDOV; WILL ALEXANDER/ WENN; PA PHOTOS/LANDOV; CHARLIE P YCROF T/ WENN; WENN

What would your lonely hearts ad say? “Slightly insecure and needy pop star seeks nice guy. ‘Over it’ man. Good sense of humor. Not a fucking retard. Rich.”

 

Rich?

I can pay for myself, but it would be nice to have the option to give up and still have the lifestyle. You need £ 10 million at the moment. Planes and clothes. I’m being facetious but…I’d like to have a country house and keep chickens.

 

I’ve noticed several young glamorous women with much older, rich-looking men here on the streets of Mayfair. It doesn’t look great. Shut the fuck up! They’re happy. Their relationship has got nothing to do with you or me. He’s okay because he’s about to die and he’s living his last days with a hot bird on his arm. Fine. She’s a little more sinister.

 

My point is: You’re a feminist. You don’t need a guy to kick-start your life. I don’t need a man, but everyone needs a cuddle. Sorry, I’m going to cry. I feel very emotional. [Puts a napkin over her face and begins to tear up] I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I was up till 3 A.M., and I get a bit emotional when I’m tired.

 

When was the last time you were happy? In 2007, when I had just met Ed and I’d been to the gym and lost a bit of weight and I had a party at my mum’s house and I was hugging everyone and telling them I loved them. People were freaked out. I find it hard to hug people and be tactile unless it’s in bed. I need to be alone with them without other people around.

Clockwise from top left: Allen, in a bloody-Bambi dress, leaving a 2008 awards show; sparring with Elton John; playing Amy Winehouse on British TV’s The Friday Night Project; getting carried from a club to avoid paparazzi; revealing her third nipple on TV

WAN T DO WNLOADS? GO TO SPIN.COM / FEbRUARY 2009 47