In these strange times, we need Lily Allen

Long-term readers of No Rock will know that I've never been Lily Allen's biggest fan. But we live in strange days, and she's pretty much made herself invaluable over the last couple of weeks.

In fact, her delightful sharing of Rupert Murdoch, Nigel Farage, and the now-defunct Liam Fox having fun at a barbecue is one of the delights of the summer so far:

I'm at a garden party. Hope I'm not sitting next to Voldemort or Fromage. I might be sick pic.twitter.com/ILsuu6kDPM

— lily (@lilyallen) July 3, 2016

Liam fox , Murdoch and Farage , breaking bread here. pic.twitter.com/wxY5mZquBb

— lily (@lilyallen) July 3, 2016

Apparently some of the guests tutted that Allen would post these images, but she had a really great riposte for that, too:

Allen also said that other guests at the party had told her she should not post pictures or videos of Murdoch. “His publications have been making money from publishing pictures of me, though,” she said.

The police don't listen to Lily Allen

Lily Allen's story about being stalked is enough to make anyone sit up and take notice:

“This guy came steaming in and I didn’t know who he was. I recoiled and he ripped the duvet off, calling me a ‘fucking bitch’ and yelling about where his dad is.”

The man had an object stuffed inside his jacket that Allen is convinced was a knife. She believes he was caught off-guard when he found she was not alone, and her friend was able to shove the man out of the house as she ran to check her children were safe. “There was this second outside my kids’ room when I was terrified to go in, in case of what I might find.”

I say make anyone sit up. The police - who were already aware that Allen was being stalked - were surprisingly relaxed:

The police told Allen the intruder was probably someone who had stumbled into the wrong flat after too much to drink. “For me, it was too much of a coincidence that the only night I had left the shutters up, this man came in. I believe he had been spending a lot of time out there in my garden, watching.”

Calling the police back the next day, Allen told them she thought the intruder could be the same man who had been threatening her. “But they were uncomfortable with the idea. Then I realised my handbag was missing and the change in atmosphere was palpable, it was like a sigh of relief: ‘now it’s burglary – we understand that’.”

Yeah. "The shutters". Lily Allen was living a life where she was having to lock herself in her own home behind metal shutters.

She'd had a bunch of letters that she'd previously passed to the police, which you might think would be useful evidence when prosecuting this sort of crime:

“I wrote to the police and asked why they weren’t using these letters going back to 2009, and then I got a short note saying they had been destroyed ‘according to police protocol’. No apology, no explanation.”

Allen - as she points out - is neither low-profile, not backwards at coming forwards. And she knows the man who tormented her needed help, not punishment. Eventually, the stalker was brought to trial. The uncomfortable question is: what would have happened if it hadn't been Lily Allen? Someone without the strength to push through a system which appears to just be confused by the nature of the crime it's being asked to investigate.

The Spectator listens to Lily Allen

The Spectator, trying to make things easier for the Establishment, isn't going to let Lily Allen try and land a blow on David Cameron:

Making clear her opposition to Cameron, Allen claimed on Twitter that he has been ‘stealing’ from the public and needs to resign:

Our Prime Minister has been stealing from us. It's very important that he resigns.

Alas Allen has failed to offer up any evidence to back up her claim. Given that offshore does not automatically equal tax avoidance, Blairmore itself does not appear to have been used specifically to reduce Cameron’s tax bill. In fact, when he sold his shares, he paid income tax on the dividends.

Except the prospectus for Blairmore did explicitly state it was being set up in such a way to minimise tax payments for the company in the UK; and obviously, if a company sits out of the country to avoid paying tax in the UK, it means that the Camerons are cashing in from profits inflated at the expense of UK taxpayers. All legal, of course, but the very fact that Dave has struggled to keep the pile of cash out of sight suggests that even he knows it's not entirely moral.

The Spectator thinks it has a winning argument, though:

Still, given that Allen is taking such an avid interest in Cameron’s family’s tax affairs, perhaps it’s worth reminding readers of some her father Keith Allen’s comments on tax avoidance. In 2011, the comedian came to U2’s defence after the Irish band were accused of tax evasion over their offshore affairs:

‘That whole thing about getting U2 to pay their tax and whatever… I don’t actually hold with the argument.’

What ever would Lily say?

Ah, yes. You should be judged based on the standards of your fathers' behaviour. Although, oddly, when people try to suggest that Cameron senior's tax avoidance somehow throws his shade on Dave's behaviour, that's wrong.

Brits 2016: James Bay hasn't bothered to check Lily Allen's arguments, but pretty sure they're wrong

James Bay - who clearly is never going to take the hat off, is he? Like a BHS version of Jamiroquai - is caught in war of words with Lily Allen.

Yeah, it's a bit like the European Union Referendum, in that whoever is in the right you're still going to end up in a group that makes you feel uncomfortable.

The story so far is that Allen has looked at the shortlist for this year's awards, and noticed that being white and being nominated appears to correlate quite closely.

James is sad she had to say such things.

He first picks up on Allen's claim that the shortlist could have been put together by Alan Partridge:

“I haven’t seen REO Speedwagon in the nominations, so I don’t know if it’s entirely Partridge."

That sort of pedantic-but-missing-the-point response is, in itself, a perfect Partridge - it's "I've got a hundred and four friends".

It’s varied nominations. It’s about music. I don’t know why she’s had to go down that route.

"I haven’t looked closely into all the nominations but it’s interesting she should bring that up."

James, there, happily claiming the nominations are are varied while admitting that he hasn't "looked closely" at them. It's like claiming all the tracks on Bay's album are wheezy half-baked nursery rhymes without having listened to closely to them.

What's more disappointing though, is that Bay's response to a not unreasonable complaint about a lack of diversity in the nominations is to say "I don't know why she's had to go down that route."

"That route", eh, James? Why's she had to point out that the shortlist seems only interested in what the white kids are doing?

James appears to believe that "it's music" is enough to explain why so very, very few black musicians have been deemed good enough to get a place on the shortlist. That's a very bad look, James. You're effectively saying "hey, if some black acts had managed to make a decent record, their music would have lifted them onto the shortlist". By trying to insist the Brits shortlist is colourblind, you're just dismissing black artists in the same way the Brits panel has done.

Still, James isn't going to get into that - he's going to attack Allen directly instead:

"I can’t think of her last album, when she last released something.”

Yeah, it's true that Allen hasn't released a record in 2015, but she did in 2014, and it went straight to number one. It's not like she's Wendy James.

More importantly, you shouldn't need to have had a hit single in the last twelve months to call the Brits out on this.

And, although Lily hasn't always been above criticism for her actions not meeting her words in the past, if the best response to 'why is this list so white' you can come up with is 'you haven't had an album out in 18 months', you might be better off shutting up.

Is there any role in life which we can truly say is without value?

Yes. Yes there is:

Pop Star Lily Allen Hires A New Personal Trainer For Her Face

I'm opposed to fracking, but starting to think that anything which hastens the end for a species which has personal trainers for faces might have something going for it.

Lily Allen turned down Band Aid, says Lily Allen

John Peel used to say that he'd accepted the offer of an OBE because he didn't want to be the sort of person who spends their time talking about how they were offered an OBE, but turned it down.

Which is something to think about as we cross over to Lily Allen, talking about how she turned down the chance to be on Band Aid 30:

“It’s difficult to give an explanation why I didn’t do it without sounding like a complete cunt,” she told the Mail on Sunday.

“I prefer to do my charitable bit by donating actual money and not being lumped in with a bunch of people like that.

“It’s like the ‘success club’ and I’m not really in that club. I don’t think I’m above it all – I’m way below it. But there’s something a bit smug about it.

That's true enough. But considering the turn she did alongside Kate Moss and Dave Gilmour at Hoping's Got Talent or her appearance on War Child compilations, or popping up duetting with Robbie Williams at another charity event, or the work she did for Tarka & Friends, or the video with Chris Martin for dementia care, or the Royal Albert Hall Coram gig, you might wonder why this specific success club for charity is such a bad thing. Or why, on those half-dozen other occasions Lily didn't apply the 'I do my charity by giving money' rule.

Still, it's possible that the sudden hand-waving about Band Aid is less about charity, and more about distracting attention from the closure of her vanity label ITNO. With only two acts signed, and Allen apparently drawing down a £100k salary for her work for it, you can see why she might feel better placed to give to charity directly.

Tedious craze creates tedious press release

I know, I know. They're pouring buckets of ice over themselves for charity, and not for self-publicity. Absolutely. And it's all in aid of... sick kids or whatever. Okay, mostly it seems about the self-publicity.

Now, thought, the harmless self-publicity craze is being hijacked by businesses trying to exploit it. A site called MusicTalkers has been given some exciting news by "music discovery service Timbre":

Lily Allen has experienced a 48% jump in her ticket demand after posting a video online of herself performing the ice bucket challenge, according to music discovery service Timbre.

Ed Sheeran, following his video, saw traffic rise by 54% for his European tour. The challenge itself involves having a bucket of ice cold water poured over the volunteer’s head, with the aim of raising awareness of neurodegenerative illness ALS.

I suppose at least they got a mention of the disease in there, too.

Timbre - whose 'music discovery' product is actually just a glorified gig guide - don't bother to put any figures on this massive uplift - no indication of if this is about six million suddenly becoming nine million, or two adding an extra one; no indication of how long a time period this uplift covers. Presumably it's just looking at its own stats, and - given that these are tickets which haven't just come onto the market - the numbers of people who happened to be looking at Allen or Sheeran on the off-chance must have been relatively low prior water-splosh; so... is a tiny uptick really worth making a fuss about?

Lily Allen has a pop at bloggers

Lily Allen has written a song about music bloggers. Bloggers! In 2014! What's the next subject of her ire going to be - free AOL sign-up discs? Dial-up modem noises?

Anyway, bloggers it is. And she's cross:

Allen talked to Rolling Stone about [URL Badman]'s highly personal inspiration. "I wrote that after I put out the video for 'Hard Out Here' and everyone said I was racist," she said. "I was really alarmed by that reaction. I stand by that video, and I know what my intention was, and I'm sorry that people interpreted it in a different way.

You'd perhaps wonder if so many people misunderstood your intentions if the problem wasn't yours, rather than theirs. But do go on.

A lot of that negative stuff came from females and the feminist blogger scene.

Righto.

What really pissed me off was the misogynistic, hipster, male bloggers that went after me in a completely different way.

So for some reason the negative stuff from the - uh - "feminist blogger scene" doesn't matter so much as what the misogynistic hipsters were doing.

Now, that could be fair enough - the feminist bloggers might have been making different points, and it's not hard to imagine boy-boy bloggers using the ill-judged Hard Out Here video as an excuse to have a pop at Allen from a different angle.

But if that is the case, then what's the preamble about Hard Out Here about, then? Because that would seem to be two different things. And it'd be more interesting to explore why you don't feel quite so outraged about the feminist critics - it'd be more worthwhile to hear you engage with them instead. But I guess that might be a harder piece of work.

Allen, though, is just so upset at people who always think the worst of others:

"They come to their own conclusions and their mind won't be changed," she continued. "That's the world we live in. I always try to look at people and see the best in them and give them a chance. . . But people that are probably less fortunate look at me and think, 'Well, she's got everything. She's had everything. It's been handed to her on a silver plate.' It's just not true. I've been through some really, really awful things that other people haven't been through. We're all human beings and life is not fucking fair."

"I always try to see the best in them and give them a chance" says Lily, apparently forgetting she's talking about a song which trots through a bunch of attacks about people living in their parents' basements and being afraid of girls. Fair comment, perhaps, but hardly a leap forward to seeing life through other people's eyes.

Glastonbury 2014: Lily Allen's plus ones are better than yours

Now, that's a nice gesture: Lily Allen's given her free Glastonbury tickets to kids from her village instead of what she apparently describes as "my showbiz mates":

"I get a certain allocation, and because I am on the Pyramid main stage you get more. My husband has been in charge of ticket allocation. I have quite a lot of blaggy friends who hit me up for stuff all the time and never really appreciate it. I have all the calls, `Can we have some tickets?" Allen said.

"He has given them all to our villagers. There`s, like, 25 kids from Canham who have never been to Glastonbury and who are going to have such a shock, and all my showbiz mates are like, `Er?`" she added."

I'm not quite sure I'm buying the 'my showbiz mates' phrase, but "blaggy friends" sounds genuine enought.

Claim of thrones: Alfie Allen doesn't exactly back up Lily

A short while back, Lily Allen was telling people that she could have been in Game Of Thrones but they'd tried to cast her in an incesty role with her brother.

Oddly, though, Alfie doesn't seem to know anything about this. The Mirror reported this:

The actor, who plays Theon Greyjoy on the hit HBO series, has refuted that Lily was ever an option to play Yara Greyjoy.

He said: "The only thing I'm going to say on that is that it's not true."

Interesting in many ways - not least that The Mirror doesn't know what "refute" means. Also interesting that that report appeared on the Mirror site nearly a fortnight ago, but the Daily Mail is reporting exactly the same story this morning like it's news.

Also interesting is how the Mirror takes Alfie as saying 'it's not true' and somehow manages to take from this that Lily was never an option.

Still, it must be hard for Alfie - now the rising star of the family, suddenly finding a relative trying to wet their beaks by saying 'yeah, they offered me a role but I turned it down'.

At least that's lightning that won't strike twice, though.

Oh. Hang on.:

Keith Allen could be joining his son in fantasy drama Game Of Thrones after auditioning for a role in the bloodthirsty show. - See more at: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/game-of-thrones-alfie-allens-dad-tries-to-get-in-on-the-act-30349270.html#sthash.qfodOVZf.dpuf

The actor told The Times he has gone for the role of a slave who leads a rebellion "like Spartacus".

He said: "Every scene is a bloodbath. Frankly I think I'm cut out for that."

Allen also revealed he had previously auditioned for the part of his son Alfie's on-screen father but said he deliberately failed the screen test.

He told The Times the offer was "a bit cheesy, a bit obvious" so he "did a rubbish audition"

Sources close to Alfie Allen say he's mulling a "I could have pranced about bellowing in a Fat Les video" counterstrike.

For those who haven't seen Game Of Thrones, it's a series a bit like Merlin but with more nudity.

Miley Cyrus has apparently done the impossible

The Daily Star makes quite a claim this morning:

Miley Cyrus shocks London's G-A-Y club with revealing outfit and raunchy show

Really, Daily Star? She "shocked" GAY, did she?

First, this is Miley Cyrus. You remember Miley Cyrus? She did the simulated anal sex with Robin Thicke on a televised awards show, and used that as the starting point for the sexualisation of her act.

Second, this is GAY. A place where the acts are seldom clothed, unless you count liquid latex and body paint. Seriously, if the archbishop of Canterbury turned up in stuffed Speedos backed by naked nuns with robo-dildo strap-ons, the audience would head to the bar muttering "well, he IS a man of the cloth so you'd expect something fairly tame, wouldn't you?"

Nobody hearing 'Miley Cyrus playing at GAY' would have turned up expecting a buttoned-up dress and an acoustic performance.

In fact, Cyrus' show is probably only just-about the most outrageous since, ooh, a fortnight back, when Lily Allen turned up as Beyonce-as-performed-by-a-drag-act. Which at least had a bit of thought put into it.

Lily Allen agrees with 'docile pop rubbish' attack

Someone on Twitter said the new Lily Allen work was "docile pop rubbish".

You might expect Allen to object; instead, she agreed:

Lily responded to the claims by agreeing that her label has forced her hand for most of her comeback so far: "What you've heard so far, yes. All I can do is do my best, the labels and the radio stations won't play the better stuff."

She then teased her new album by telling him: "Keep the faith."

Which is charmingly honest, but does raise the question of why she's doing work that's so poor the label will get behind it in the first place.

That's an odd question to be asking, although one that we probably should be asking more often.

NME Awards 2014: Did they mention the Arctic Monkeys?

Well, now this week's NME Arctic Monkeys propaganda-style cover makes sense. How could they treat Alex Turner's toe-curling performance at the Brits as anything other than triumphant, knowing there were six million NME Awards in the cupboard with his name on, to be distributed this week.

Here's that list of NME Awards winners in full:

Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Lily Allen
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys

Lily Allen? Oh, yes. The best solo artist. According to the NME. You might recall her work in the time period that voting covered was Hard Out Here, and a cover of a sodding Keane tune to sell some soft furnishing.

To be fair, she was in a category where she was up against McCartney, Kanye West and Bowie, so it was a bit of a Hobson's choice category - there wasn't really any way you could vote for anyone new or fresh.

But let's face it, these awards are the NME's chance to show it knows what's going on, and on the awards page on the website there's this:

Yeah, the NME is still trying to sell Christmas subscriptions at the end of February.

Here's the actual list of winners in full:

Godlike Genius
Blondie

Songwriters' Songwriter
Paul McCartney

Award For Innovation
Damon Albarn

Teenage Cancer Trust Outstanding Contribution to Music Award
Belle & Sebastian

Best British Band supported by Windows Phone
Arctic Monkeys

Best International Band supported by Austin, Texas
Haim

Best Solo Artist
Lily Allen

Best New Band supported by Mossimo
Drenge

Best Live Band supported by Gig Buddy
Arctic Monkeys

Best Album supported by PS4 InFAMOUS Second Son
Arctic Monkeys, 'AM'

Best Track supported by Blackstar Amps
Disclosure, 'White Noise'

Best Music Video supported by Domino's
Eagulls, 'Nerve Endings'

Best Festival
Glastonbury

Best TV Show
Breaking Bad

Best Music Film
Made Of Stone

Philip Hall Radar Award supported by Monster Headphones
Fat White Family

Best Reissue
The Clash, 'Sound System'

Best Band Blog Or Twitter
Alana Haim, Haim

Best Book
Morrissey, Autobiography

Best Small Festival
Swn

Lily Allen's bitcoin bargain

Showing the sort of nous she brought to the clothes business, Lily Allen missed out on a great deal:

About 5 years ago someone asked me to stream a gig live on second life for hundreds of thousNds of bitcoins, "as if" I said. #idiot #idiot

— Lily Allen (@lilyallen) January 5, 2014

Although maybe she wasn't making such a bad decision.

After all, five years ago, "hundreds of thousands of bitcoins" would have been almost the entire supply of bitcoins, and even three and a half years ago, you'd need to scrape together 10,000 of the coins to buy a couple of pizzas.

So even if you move the timescale so the eyebrow raising bit is not the number of bitcoins on offer, but someone wanting to stream a gig in Second Life, the value of the offer would have been fairly small. Especially considering this was a point when Allen had quit, or sort of quit, music.

All rather odd.

Lily Allen: Wasn't she in the rag trade?

One of the stranger aspects of Lily Allen's Hard Out Here shotstorm has been that it happened at all. Hadn't she quit music for the fashion industry? How come she's back making music?

May or may not be related: Lucy In Disguise, Lily's fashion business, has been put into liquidation, apparently:

On Sunday, the Mail Online revealed that the brand's backer Aurora Fashions - which also owns Coast, Oasis and Warehouse - was "granted a compulsory winding up order against the company in the High Court earlier this year."

Aurora claims it was forced to take legal action after Lucy In Disguise failed to pay back a £100,000 debt in sufficient time. It is still owed £12,000.

Hang on a moment, though...

Lily's sister, Sarah Owen, who's running the shop day-to-day, points out the business is still trading:

Saddened and more than a little bit annoyed to read in the weekend papers that Lucy in Disguise is finished... Well, here I am at Lucy in Disguise, 48 Lexington Street, Soho, London with a shop full of customers trying on vintage classics – looking for that special outfit for Christmas!! I don’t’ think I’m dreaming, no they are definitely real people in a real shop.

It seems that the press can’t get enough of raking over old stories and trying to make something new out of it – strange really as this is what Lucy In Disguise does really well – creating fabulous new looks from fashion pieces from a bygone era!!

Just to put the record straight for everyone.... Yes, there were some financial problems back in 2011 and yes, a couple of ideas for the business didn’t really gel, BUT things have moved on since then.

In 2012, there was an attempt to wind up the company, but - ironically - the attempt failed because the person who turned up to present the order was badly dressed:

October 08 2012

A winding-up petition presented to the Court against Lucy in Disguise LLP was this morning dismissed by Chief Registrar Baister on a technicality.

The petitioner was represented by a solicitor from law firm Ellis Taylor. Unfortunately the solicitor was not appropriately attired in legal court dress and was refused audience and was therefore unable to address the Companies Court. As a result the petition was dismissed.

Nobody appeared at the Companies Court on behalf of Lucy in Disguise LLP which otherwise may have been able to obtain an order for costs of and occasioned by the petition against the petitioner.

There was another attempt in June 2013, and this was successful.

But, as we know from the HMV story, simply being put into liquidation doesn't mean the same thing as ceasing to trade.

So: something went wrong, and perhaps not quite so far back as might be suggested. But the second hand clothes shop? It's still in business.

Wait, wait: there is something interesting about the Lily Allen video

Lily Allen's probably wishing she'd stuck to covering Keane and helping John Lewis flog festive geegaws.

Instead, she's found herself caught up in being guilty of not having addressed every single social wrong in a three-minute pop parody video.

There's a lot of stuff been churned out about the Hard Out Here video, and, I suspect, there is much more to come, although anything that goes beyond 'perhaps Allen didn't think through absolutely everything through from every angle' is probably overboiled and aimed at a soft target.

What is quite interesting, though, is the interesting and polite interaction between Suzanne Moore and Lily Allen on Twitter last night - proving, at least, that it is possible to disagree, and disagree about fundamental and important things, without resorting to ALLCAPS FUCK-LOBBING.

What is even more interesting, though, is that Allen appears to have deleted her messages to Moore, leaving Moore appearing to be talking into thin air. It's a pity, as Allen made a really sharp point, reminding Moore of the time Suzanne accidentally upset trans people.

It all ended with this:

2) Feminism is cool about disagreement . I respect. @lilyallen We are grown ups . We both give as good as we get.

— suzanne moore (@suzanne_moore) November 14, 2013

But it's disappointing that Lily's side of the debate has vanished already, and her Twitter feed returned to a bland list of viewcounts and iTunes positions. I'd rather hear her thoughts than Keane covers.

The Daily Star has something to say about Lily Allen

POP star Lily Allen says she could not work with Damon Albarn because she found him “too irritating”.

The 28-year-old singer spilled the beans on the pair’s doomed collaboration attempt in 2008.

Damon, 45, had said at the time: “She’s a talented kid but it was just a bad idea.”

Given that that's the entire Daily Star story, is it fair to describe two words as "spilling the beans"?

Also: if you're not expecting 2008-period Damon Albarn to be irritating, you've not really prepared, have you?

Brits 2012: Adele was cut short; the story not so

After James Corden's producer-enforced stage-rush to shut her up, ITV are hoping Adele will accept their apology:

"The Brits is a live event. Unfortunately the programme was over-running and we had to move on. We would like to apologise to Adele for the interruption."

Yes, it's a live event. That, surely, is the point? Is there any point in showing a programme, constantly chanting 'the most important award of the evening is the best album award', and then rushing the presentation of that prize?

Yes, Blur were about to come on - but they didn't finish their set on ITV1 anyway; given that there was already going to be an awkward mid-song bungle off to ITV2, could a couple of minutes not been found for Adele?

In fact, was it really so important to scramble to keep ITV on schedule? Yes, pushing the News At Ten back to the News At Five Past Ten might have been awkward, but would it have been that bad? The delay would have knocked on through the rest of the schedule - but what delights did ITV have lined up?

A repeat of Benidorm.
A repeat of The Cube.
Some sort of gambling show.

Could it have been what ITV was really worried about was missing the start of the junction for that, Jackpot 247? Was the concern that letting Adele say "cheers" would have delayed the network's attempts to separate fools and money?

Lily Allen senses another motivation:

"I'd rather hear adeles acceptance speech," she tweeted after the incident, adding, "I can't say I'm surprised [it was cut off]. It was like the music industry's attitude to women played out as a metaphor."

Up to a point. More like the attitude to musicians. It's all just content, and must be cut to fit the gaps between the sales points.

Gordon in the morning: Past tents

Hasn't the story about Lily Allen doing a Glastonbury honeymoon already been round the world twice?

A Glastonbury insider said: "They'll have easy access to all mod-cons. They can feel like they're camping, but there will be no roughing it."

Isn't the "feel" of camping precisely the "roughing it" bit?

Gordon in the morning: No Allen at the Abbey

I'm not a big fan of Lily Allen, and I think it's clumsily-worded, but surely her tweet about not being invited to the subsidised wedding this Friday was intended as a joke?:

She moaned on Twitter: "You can quote me as 'outraged', why does bloody Joss Stone get an invite and not moi? I sang at the Diana concert too!"

Gordon's taken it at face value, though.

Her fiancé SAM COOPER must be pleased - it will stop Lily getting envious about Kate's big day.

What does that mean, Gordon? That if Allen was in the Abbey, she'd suddenly demand that Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg came to her wedding?

And if that was the case, wouldn't she get the same idea what with the bloody Royal Wedding being on all the televisions and radios for miles around?