Adele had been due to perform at a Vegas residency called ‘Weekends with Adele’, starting in January and going through to April. However, life meant she had to cancel the night before. Covid had ruined everything, the show would have been “half arsed” as she put it.

However, no one until now has realised what a dramatic and dangerous effect this had on Adele. She’s spoken to Lauren Laverne about it (this time on Radio 4) and it gets brutal:

“I definitely felt everyone’s disappointment and I was devastated and I was frightened about letting them down.. I thought I could pull it together and make it work and I couldn’t. I don’t think any other artist would have done what I did, and I think that is why it was such a massive, massive story.”

This took a toll on her. She “was a shell of a person for a couple of months… I just had to wait it out and just grieve it, I guess, just grieve the shows and get over the guilt, but it was brutal.” The mass of abuse she suffered didn’t help.

But “You can’t buy me for nothing,” she said. “I’m not going to just do a show because I have to or because people are going to be let down or because we’re going to lose loads of money.”

Fortunately she got to do a gig at Hyde Park recently and seemed hugely moved to be performing live again.