Pop star Lily Allen has hit out at her former celebrity friends - saying that their behaviour left her feeling bullied.
The Somewhere Only We Know singer, 28, who retired from music four years ago, attacked today's showbiz scene, saying it was full of fake and "sterile f****** Botoxed idiots."
She told Esquire magazine that she was ostracised by people who she had counted as friends when she became pregnant.
Allen said that the Britpop scene, when people were taking drugs and "having sex with each other", was more "real".
The mother-of-two, who has made her pop comeback with new single Hard Out Here and her rendition of Somewhere Only We Know for the John Lewis advert, said of becoming famous: "I thought the people in that showbiz circle were my friends. But almost the second I got pregnant and I wasn't able to go out and party, they were suddenly quite nasty.
"There's a way that those people survive, and it's not by being nice. The way they make themselves feel powerful is to ostracise other people.
"I feel blessed to be able to recognise that but at the same time it can still feel pretty s*** when you walk into a room full of people and you can feel the eyes looking at you and people laughing.
"It's hard for me because I will eternally feel like that little bullied girl at school, because that's what I was."
The Smile singer told the magazine: "I feel like when I was growing up and dreaming of being a pop star, it was the days of Britpop when things felt authentic and anarchic, and people were taking drugs and having a lot of fun and having sex with each other and it wasn't fake, it was real.
"So excuse me if I found it a bit disappointing when I arrived and it was a bunch of sterile f****** Botoxed idiots that stank of desperation."
Allen said that she retired from the pop world because she was "at the end of my tether" and "had enough of people constantly hacking at me".
"I think once you're exhausted physically and mentally, it does get you down," she added.
But Allen, who returned to the top of the UK singles chart with her cover version of Keane's Somewhere Only We Know, said of her new outlook on life: "I feel very lucky. I couldn't ask for much more really. And actually I'm not really asking for much more."
"I'm not trying to take over the world here. I don't want to be Rihanna. I want to sell some records, sell some tickets to my shows and live my life."
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