London - Singer Lily Allen has admitted that she slept with female prostitutes after becoming "lost and lonely" as her marriage broke down.
The 33-year-old pop star revealed that she had encounters with escorts in 2014, months after the birth of her second daughter Marnie.
She told her 874 000 Instagram followers: "I slept with female escorts when I was on tour, cause I was lost and lonely and looking for something.
"I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed. I don’t do it any more."
Allen is understood to have met the women around the time she released her album Sheezus, and was also suffering from post-natal depression.
A post shared by LILY ALLEN(@lilyallen) on Sep 1, 2018 at 10:52am PDT
In 2016, the mother of two split with her husband, businessman Sam Cooper, after five years of marriage.
She has blamed her life in the spotlight for the breakdown of her marriage.
In a recent interview, she said: "I lost my sense of self. I lost my identity. I was being a bad mum. I was being bad at my job. I’d wake up on a tour bus in the middle of Wisconsin and be so hung-over. I cheated on my husband.
"All I wanted to do was be with my kids. I wasn’t even making any money." The troubled star regularly regales her social media followers with her trenchant political views, speaking out against austerity, Brexit and Donald Trump.
She has also attacked the use of sexuality in the music industry, criticising the American pop band The Pussycat Dolls for "promoting prostitution".
She said: "The Pussycat Dolls can get away with gyrating in no clothes, promoting prostitution and womanising, if you ask me it’s wrong."
Allen said she will discuss her encounters with female prostitutes in her forthcoming memoir My Thoughts Exactly. The book is also expected to chronicle details of her rumoured tryst with ex-Oasis singer Liam Gallagher.
Her parents, actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen, split when she was only four.
She once admitted that her parents’ divorce left her feeling insecure and craving attention.
Allen has two children with her ex-husband, Ethel, seven, and Marnie, now five. She and Mr Cooper were divorced this summer.