Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Silent side of Adele’s split
Star sings of heartbreak over divorce ...as over road ex Simon keeps quiet
30 is an album that will break all recent records. Powerfully raw, deeply personal and yet heartbreakingly universal.
Radio can’t get enough of it and you will not do your Christmas shopping without hearing it.
Indeed, Adele’s muchanticipated new album is expected to top both US and UK charts after its release yesterday. And each listener will come to know the deep emotional agony of Adele’s recent divorce.
But one voice will not be heard – that of her ex-husband Simon Konecki.
For while sources stress he and Adele are still close – literally, as they have homes across the road from each other in Beverly Hills – he has taken a different approach to the split.
So how will the Old Etonian charity boss feel now the whole world knows what went on behind their tightly closed doors as their son Angelo, now nine, saw his parents’ relationship crumble?
A close associate in LA says: “Simon likes to be under the radar. He doesn’t attend big glamorous Hollywood events. He certainly doesn’t discuss his marriage at all with people.”
Simon, 47, did not join the recent filming in London of the ITV show An Audience With Adele, being shown
Simon likes to be under the radar. He doesn’t discuss his marriage ASSOCIATE OF SIMON KONECKI IN LOS ANGELES
tomorrow night. Instead, she was with her new man, sports agent Rich Paul.
However, Simon was spotted in the crowd with Angelo when Adele, 33, performed her One Night Only special at LA’S Griffith Observatory this week.
To their credit, Angelo always comes first. Adele bought her £8.7million Beverly Hills mansion opposite Simon so they could co-parent. His £488,000 LA home in Van Nuys, 11 miles away, is, however, said to be his favourite.
A friend of Adele’s, an LA music industry insider, says: “They have a very modern-day family dynamic.
“They’ve been adamant any personal tension should never come ahead of what’s best for Angelo.”
Angelo is the reason some people think Simon is relaxed about 30.
He knew Adele, who called in mediators to split her £140million fortune, has always drawn on heartbreak for her work. She didn’t even discuss the album with him, explaining to Oprah
Winfrey: “He knows I have to dig deep and tell my stories.”
A lawyer in Simon’s circle says: “He has had to resign himself to the fact that she would talk. He knew the risks going in. This is the type of artist she is, she wears her heart on her sleeve.”
Simon and Adele met through Ed Sheeran, a mutual friend, in 2011.
Simon, then a 36-year-old former city broker who had dropped out of finance to “do good in the world” with
Life Water, his canned water company, and Drop4drop, a charity helping bring clean water to less developed countries.
Adele, then a 23-year-old multimillionaire superstar, already had hit albums 19 and 21 under her belt.
They were together for eight years, and married in secret in 2018. For much of the time they holed up in their country bolthole in Sussex or LA mansion. Even Angelo’s name was treated as top secret.
But in April 2019, Adele left Simon, fed up of a life where she felt she was “just plodding along”. Now she couldn’t be more of an open book, especially when, apparently, singing about Simon’s faults.
In Woman Like Me, Adele sings: “Complacency is the worst trait to have, are you crazy?
“It is so sad a man like you could be so lazy.”
She adds: “How can I help lift you if you refuse to activate the life that you truly want?
That’s why you think I make you feel small, but that’s your projection, it’s not my rejection.” The possible impact of these words, is all the more poignant considering New York-born Simon’s privileged upbringing. His parents, Andrew and Rosemary, currently divide their time between Switzerland and a £1million home in Florida.
For their son, feeling second best must have been a foreign concept.
And now, as Adele shares her side of the relationship, will the man who said she made him “feel small”, mind being the water cooler hot topic once more? Or will he decide he needs a bigger voice?