Lily Allen issues grovelling apology to BBC star 20 years after brutal ‘trollop’ attack

“I called Edith Bowman a trollop in one of my very early MySpace posts, for absolutely no f***ing reason, and I apologise,” she said.

The outburst occurred two decades ago, when Ms Allen was on the cusp of stardom with her debut album Alright, Still, and the social media platform was still a dominant force online.

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The Scottish broadcaster, now 52, was targeted without any apparent provocation.

In the original post, Ms Allen grumbled about being “rudely awoken” by Ms Bowman on the radio and ridiculed the presenter for acting like “BESTEST friends” with any musician she encountered. Ideally, Ms Allen quipped, one clad in “skinny jeans and stripey cardigans.”

She also mocked Ms Bowman’s fondness for The Magic Numbers.

Ms Bowman has previously spoken about how she tackled Ms Allen directly when she was assigned to interview the singer at T in the Park, by which time Ms Allen had already reached number one.

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“I went up and said, ‘Hello, what’s the problem? What have I done to offend you?'” Ms Bowman recalled.

Ms Allen allegedly explained that she had been tuning into Radio 1 daily, hoping to hear her music played, and had simply lashed out in frustration.

She apologised at the time, telling Ms Bowman: “I’m the type of person who speaks before I think.”

The interview with Perfect Magazine also saw the singer offer a frank assessment of herself as a romantic partner.

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She acknowledged that while her life has grown considerably calmer since she stopped “going out and getting wasted,” relationships still bring out a more demanding side of her personality.

“I’m high maintenance in a relationship,” Ms Allen admitted. “I’m like ‘, Do you love me?’ ‘Are you gonna leave me?’ ‘I’m ugly, aren’t I?’ I need a lot of validation.”

The singer did not identify her current partner by name during the conversation, though she has been romantically linked to Jonah Freud, 29, for roughly eight months.

Their relationship represents Ms Allen’s first serious romance following the end of her four-year marriage to Stranger Things star David Harbour.

Freud is the son of PR executive Matthew Freud and his former wife Caroline Hutton, and a nephew of the late painter Lucian Freud.

The pair were first seen together publicly at Ms Allen’s star-studded Christmas party, held at Stringfellows in London in December, where they were photographed kissing.

They have since been spotted on various dates and holidays together.

Ms Allen refrained from discussing Freud directly in the Perfect Magazine interview, though the relationship has been widely reported for close to nine months.

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It marks a new chapter for the singer, whose marriage to Harbour ended after four years.

She has suggested that her day-to-day existence is now far less chaotic than it once was, even if she remains emotionally intense within romantic partnerships.

Ms Allen is currently touring her acclaimed album West End Girl across Europe and the United States, with the live show presented more as a theatrical production than a traditional concert, complete with updated costumes and set pieces.

The record drew extensively on the dissolution of her marriage to Mr Harbour, though Ms Allen has repeatedly cautioned that its 14 tracks blend fact with fiction and should not be taken as “gospel.”

Mr Harbour himself recently weighed in on the album, telling Variety that listening to it was “weird.”

He said he respected Ms Allen’s right to draw on her own life for her art but chose not to delve into the specifics of their relationship.

He added that while Ms Allen had channelled “her experience” into the record, “it wasn’t my experience.”