Lily Allen explains reason behind sex worker revelation in her memoir

Lily Allen engaged in a candid discussion about sex, kinks and fetishes with podcast co-host Miquita Oliver on the latest episode of Miss Me?

During the episode, Allen, 39, spoke about why she chose to reveal that she once paid for sex.

The pop singer, author and actor presents the BBC podcast with her friend, TV presenter and radio personality Oliver, with episodes going out twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays.

On Monday’s episode (17 June), the duo engaged in a lively conversation about their respective sexual histories, as well as debating various kinks and fetishes while taking questions from listeners.

Allen, who was a regular target for the tabloid press at the height of her fame in the Noughties, opened up about why she chose to divulge that she once hired a female sex worker from an agency, who visited her around three or four times, while she was at her “lowest ebb”.

“She was expensive,” Allen wrote in her 2018 autobiography, My Thoughts Exactly. “High-class hookers are. I didn’t care. I just wanted her to help me feel something.”

Speaking on Miss Me?, Allen said she was keen to use her platform to “normalise” things that others might feel ashamed about.

“During the breakdown of my last marriage, I was very promiscuous and experimental, and I... had sex with female prostitutes,” she said, correcting herself to say “sex workers”.

Allen said she wrote about the experience in her book partly because she lived in a state of “perpetual fear” that she was about to be “gotcha’d” by the tabloids, while in the middle of a split from her first husband, builder and decorator Sam Cooper.

“I knew that this thing existed and that I’d been behaving this way, and I thought that was going to be revealed, so I thought I’d take a bit of the power back and reveal it myself [in My Thoughts Exactly],” she said.

The “Smile” singer went on to say that she believed “lots of other people” had similar experiences. “When they hear someone like me talking about their experiences in a non-shameful, matter-of-fact way, it makes people feel better about themselves,” she said.

“To me, that’s what art is. Helping people to come to terms with their own behaviour and behaviour that society sometimes comes down on, but we’re all just human.”

In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Allen said she was “pretty brazen” with her behaviour.

“I think I just didn’t care,” she said, before adding: “Actually, maybe I did want to get caught, maybe I wanted Sam to rescue me. I wanted him to find out about these things and say, ‘Enough is enough, you’re coming home.’”

Elsewhere in the episode, Allen joked that she hoped her husband, Stranger Things star David Harbour, wasn’t listening, as she said that she’s sexually ‘vanilla” now, meaning unadventurous.

Meanwhile, Oliver was shocked to learn that she only has a three out of five rating on wikiFeet, a photo-sharing foot fetish website that posts images of celebrity feet, while Allen has a “rare” five-star rating.

“Oh my god,” Oliver exclaimed, as Allen burst out laughing. “Do you know what, wikiFeet, I really don’t need that s*** right now.”

Miss Me? is available every Monday and Thursday on BBC Sounds.