Lily Allen: The Fear

 

Hurrah, Lily Allen is back! She went away and it was sad and now she's come back and it is great! Rejoice! Rejoice! Hurrah! Etc. (You have to say that otherwise she gets very cross and sweary about you on her MySpace page.)

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Right, now that's out of the way: where has Lily been?

She has been caravanning, apparently. In a pastel caravan in the middle of an unremarkable field.

She's been gazing out of caravan windows, spending her spare time laundering her underwear and teddy bears, apparently. Every now and again (or, more accurately, now) she steps out of the caravan for a breath of fresh air. But once out there, she spots something:

Hmm ... she seems to be looking up at that there title floating above the video that declares that this is the "clean version". How very interesting. We immediately make a mental note to look out for points where it might, therefore, have been cleaned up from whatever much more raunchy "dirty" version might be out there.

In the meantime, Lily turns to go back into the caravan ...

... And we discover that the inside has been magically transformed into what looks like a gigantic, plush mansion. Well, either that, or this is a Tardis caravan. But no, let us assume it is magic.

Entering the caravansion, Lily encounters a long line of dancing butlers, who prance, lift, skip and twirl around her.

I think we should safely assume that this sequence in the unclean version of the video is exactly the same, apart from the fact they all have their genitals hanging out of their trousers. Fit for family consumption, no; but certainly a more attention-grabbing take on the routine.

Lily sits at a dressing table. It is difficult to tell what was unclean about this sequence before they cleaned it up. Although as we pan over and look at her rider table ...

We can see a huge pile of cakes that look a little bit like multicoloured breasts ... If you squint a bit and ask a 13-year-old boy for pointers. Is the dirty version a variation on that theme? Perhaps there's another table, filled with confections in more saucy shapes that they simply can't show us, because YouTube's much more grown-up and proper these days.

Continuing the song's sarcastic theme about wanting to be rich, spoilt, famous and stupid, Lily enters a room filled with extravagant gifts. Dancing gifts. Sparkling and shiny, bright and clean, wrapped in Harrods' pastel finest. Hang on, clean? So maybe that's what it means by "clean". The "dirty" version of the video is just a bit grubby, with presents from Woolworths' leftover warehouse sale, wrapped in a thick coat of dust and sticky pick-and-mix fingerprints.

Lily walks out of the house and back past the butlers. We're still wondering if the dirty version has the same servants but with no trousers on, and from the looks of this screengrab, so is Lil'. We're jolly glad this is the clean version, though. In the other version, it would have been like a herd of hairless hamsters on a bouncy castle, the way these chaps are skipping about. Certainly not a thing to spend your lunch-hour idling over.

Lily strides away from the house, holding the hands of two trousered butlers ...

Supported, if we look carefully, on her right by someone who appears to have carbon monoxide poisoning, and on her left by someone who's been dead for four days. Seriously, one's bright pink, the other a pallid purplish-grey. What's wrong with these chaps? Has the vain world of model-dancers branched out from tangerine spray-tan into more exotic colours? We can only hope so.

Lily walks through the dancing butlers, dancing presents and large bunches of dancing balloons that may or may not be supposed to be giant haemorrhoids with legs.

Lily Allen's videos have always had an air of Hollywood about them, but this is a full scale MGM musical number in full Technicolor. Brightly coloured smoke, explosions, balloons, glitter, and giant letters spelling out ...

Well, her name. Though you can only see L-I-L and E there, so there could be a warning message behind the smoke, pointing out that "LILT is made of WEE". It probably isn't, but it could be.

It isn't. It just says "Lily Allen" in this version (the clean version). Which is a bit dull.

On that Ziegfeld Follies-esque ending, though, the triumphant return of Lily Allen is done. "Click here for related videos", it says, helpfully.

Ever compliant, I click there. Not least because I might be able to find out what's so filthy about the other version of the video and ...

OH! Oh I see! There's nothing racier about any of them; she just doesn't swear as much. Oh.

You’ve read it. Now review it.

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