This one was of the nasty schoolgirl variety, stirred up by Chef Gordon Ramsay.
First part from Grazia 4th December 2019 by Rebecca Reid
“The first shot was fired by Allen who was at the time 21. She name-checked Cheryl (then 23) on her song, subtly titled Cheryl Tweedy. The lyrics, if you don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of noughties b-sides, go:
Wish my life was a little less seedy,
Why am I always so greedy?
Wish I looked just like Cheryl Tweedy,
I know I never will.“
…Anyway, Cheryl was not a big fan of her inclusion in this meditation on the perception of beauty in the modern world. Or perhaps she took exception to the part where Allen commented in the press that women don’t actually want to look like Cheryl, they just think they do.
In 2007, Allen added fuel to the fire by changing the lyrics of the song while performing it at Glastonbury, changing the lyrics from ‘I wish I looked just like Cheryl Tweedy’ to ‘I’m glad I don’t look like f**king Cheryl Tweedy.’”
Cheryl responded on Gordon Ramsey’s show The F Word:
I didn’t think this was so bad at the time. I thought it was just Ramsey’s sexist way of giving a compliment. A chick with a dick meant a woman with balls, guts, didn’t it? Ok, I was naive; it was Gordon’s suggestion. Why is the man responsible the one who suggested it was never blamed?
“Rather than allowing the fight to quietly die now that shots had been fired equally from each side, Allen wrote an open letter (sidenote: we missed when people used to write open letters all the time). In the letter, she wrote: ‘Cheryl, if you’re reading this, I may not be as pretty as you, but at least I write and sing my own songs without the aid of Auto-Tune.
‘I must say, taking your clothes off, doing sexy dancing and marrying a rich footballer [Cheryl had since wed Ashley Cole] must be very gratifying, your mother must be so proud.’”
At this point, I thought Allen was degenerating into a middle-class girl jealous of her working-class ‘rival’s’ success.
.”..In 2014, Lily told Q magazine ‘I wish that whole thing hadn’t happened. I like Cheryl. She’s good on The X Factor, she’s pretty and she’s got balls (but not a dick). I like women who do well.’
And then in 2018, with the release of her autobiography, Allen returned to the ‘cat fight’ narrative to comment that the root cause was actually the fact that she was extremely sexually frustrated. She put the entire saga succinctly, writing, ‘Sorry Cheryl, I was angry because I hadn’t come yet.’”
Which struck me as strange: had Lily never managed to achieve one herself, or is it still too taboo to count?
Or was that a good line to get publicity for Lily’s book?
A more credible explanation from the Mail Online 16 September 2018
“Lily Allen has finally apologised to Cheryl, citing the reason behind their 12-year feud on her own sexual frustrations and jealousy over her success…
…Now 12-years on, Lily has reflected about the rivalry in her book, ‘My Thoughts Exactly’. According to The Guardian, she wrote: ‘I was frustrated, I was struggling with my own issues around sexuality. I’d never even had an orgasm, and then here were these gorgeous girls — my peers, colleagues so to speak, and co-workers — taking their clothes off with wild abandon and being loved and rewarded for it. I couldn’t take it.
‘Sorry Cheryl, I was angry because I hadn’t come yet, it was ridiculous. I b**ched at Cheryl because she insulted me after I provoked her.’
(Allen) added she ‘resented’ Cheryl for her success with Girls Aloud and regretted writing Cheryl’s mother ‘must be so proud, stupid b****’ for Cheryl ‘marrying a rich footballer’, commenting the tweet was ‘such a horrible thing to say’.”
That’s how you do real self-awareness
I think they should study feuds in school; they could save themselves and each other a lot of pain.
#LilyAllen #lilyallen #Cheryl @lilyallen