We’re off, Lily – and we wish you’d never been our landlady!
Tenants who star moaned she couldn’t kick out say...
THE family of diplomats renting Lily Allen’s £1million flat have attacked her ‘astonishing and stupid’ online rant in which she complained they had refused to leave.
The millionaire pop star said she would be homeless over Christmas as her Italian tenants were claiming ‘diplomatic immunity’ to avoid eviction.
But the family insisted they had already agreed to leave and had simply asked for two more days in the ground-floor flat.
As removal men arrived at the north London home yesterday, mother-of-three Maria Bilotta, 38, a photographer, said they had agreed to move out by today.
She added: ‘We are leaving … I just asked for a couple of days. I’m really astonished. I don’t know why she did this. I’m very sorry I had her as a landlord because all this has happened.’
In the now deleted tweet that started the furore, Miss Allen told her six million followers: ‘Meant to be moving back into my flat this week, but my tenants just dropped that they can’t find anywhere to go up to their standards. Then they said they’re diplomats and have diplomatic immunity and there’s nothing I can do about it. So, who fancies a family of three for Xmas?’
The family said they were baffled by the singer’s remarks and criticised her for exposing them to unnecessary public attention on Twitter.
Mrs Bilotta, who has had photos published in the Wall Street Journal and exhibited around the world, said: ‘We are diplomats. But I don’t want to make trouble to our embassy. This is so stupid. I can’t believe this.’
Asked if she had anything more to add, she said: ‘No, because I would never sink so low.’
Her husband, who arrived home on a scooter with Italian diplomatic plates, said: ‘We were moving out anyway.
‘This is exposing ordinary people to the magnitude of six million people. Things are not supposed to work like that. I am not a public figure. It’s not on.’
The father, who did not want to be named or to reveal his job, spent yesterday co- ordinating removal men who ferried large cardboard boxes in and out of the property. ‘I just want to be left to be boring,’ he added. Miss Allen, 32, bought the two-bedroom flat near Queen’s Park station for £900,000 in 2008. It has an estimated rental value of up to £2,250 per month.
The year before her purchase she appeared on the BBC political show This Week, where she talked about money being a ‘massive issue’ and claimed she could not afford to buy a home in London. ‘I’ve been doing what I do for a few years now, and I’ve been paid pretty well … but even I’m not in a position to buy a one-bedroom flat in the city I grew up in,’ she said. Miss Allen’s tweet on Monday resulted in a flurry of angry responses, with one Twitter user branding her a ‘champagne socialist’ and others starting a mock ‘pray for Lily’ hashtag. Others accused her of ‘profiteering’ by renting her property to wealthy tenants ‘when you could be housing Syrian refugees’. Last year Miss Allen apologised to Calais migrants on Britain’s behalf before insisting she would ‘100 per cent’ take in a refugee.
‘These children are being displaced … [if] there’s room for people in my house, I’m going to take them in,’ she told the BBC.
The divorced mother of two, who is reportedly worth almost £15million, remained defiant on social media last night, writing to her followers that she had ‘#NoShame’ over the debacle.
It comes after Miss Allen, daughter of actor Keith Allen, sold her £4.2million Cotswolds mansion last year following a hefty tax bill.
Under the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964, diplomats are entitled to immunity from the civil and administrative jurisdiction of the British courts, except in certain circumstances.
Miss Allen’s spokesman declined to comment last night.