Adele’s destroyed God knows how many dream trips for fans – she’s disappeared up her celeb backside, says Piers Morgan
THE most famous phrase in showbusiness is, “The show must go on!”.
It originates in the 19th century in circuses, when either performers got injured doing death-defying stunts or animals got loose, and the ringmaster would bound out to keep the entertainment going and stop the audience from worrying or panicking and fleeing the Big Top.
In more recent times, the maxim was immortalised by Freddie Mercury in a Queen song about the late, great singer’s determination to carry on working even as he was dying from HIV/Aids.
“The show must go on,” Freddie sang, “inside my heart is breaking, my make-up may be flaking, but my smile, still, stays on . . . I’ll face it with a grin, I’m never giving in, on with the show . . . I’ll top the bill, I’ll overkill, I have to find the will to carry on, on with the show, the show must go on!”
I thought of those heroic and courageous words when I heard about pop superstar Adele’s decision to yank her Las Vegas residency just hours before it began, and way too late for many fans who had travelled from all over the world, at vast expense, to be there.
To take such drastic action so close to show time suggested that something irrevocably seismic must have suddenly happened to derail the three-month “Weekends with Adele” gigs for which many thousands of tickets had sold at up to $5,000 each.
And sure enough, Adele offered just such an explanation — it was the deadly virus which has devastated the world for the past two years.
She posted an emotional apology to her fans on Instagram, sobbing away — is she ever not sobbing? — as she said it was all due to damn Covid-19 and pandemic-related equipment supply chain issues.
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“I’m so sorry,” she wailed, “but my show ain’t ready. I’m so upset and I’m really embarrassed. We’ve been destroyed by delivery delays and Covid. Half my crew and team are ill with Covid and still are, and it’s been impossible to finish the show.
“I can’t give you what I have right now, and I’m gutted. I’m sorry it’s last minute.”
As with Boris Johnson’s excuses for attending lockdown-breaking No 10 parties, and Meghan “Princess Pinocchio” Markle’s incendiary smears against the Royal Family to Oprah Winfrey, a rather conflicting version of events emerged almost as fast as it spilled out of Adele’s tear-stained lips.
Myriad reports from well-placed sources at the venue, Caesars Palace, swiftly suggested the real reason was more down to her blazing behind-the-scenes rows with renowned concert set designer Esmeralda Devlin, who has worked with everyone from Beyonce to U2.
First, veteran Vegas journalist Scott Roeben revealed that Adele insisted on tearing out the hi-tech video and lighting system at Caesars’ Colosseum theatre and installing her own.
“Such demands not only drive up production costs,” wrote Roeben, “but, at a time when supplies are disrupted it’s a recipe for disaster — in this case last-minute delays or cancellations. Caesars Palace was ‘100 per cent ready for her’, so there are other forces at work here. Unfortunately, it sounds like one of those factors is a diva.”
The Sun then broke the new revelation that she also went berserk over performing a swimming pool stunt that she moaned would be like singing in a “baggy old pond”.
And yesterday, trusted Hollywood website TMZ revealed Adele was raging about everything from the choir to the sound system, adding: “Several sources say they could not satisfy her production demands . . .”
As for the Covid excuse, TMZ stated: “Our Caesars sources say they can’t speak to Adele’s crew, but the Caesars crew was ready, willing and able, and they say they can’t understand why she waited until the last minute to pull the plug.”
One explanation may be the startling claim that she didn’t even bother to turn up for on-set rehearsals at Caesars until a few days before the residency was due to start.
Adele didn’t prepare properly and didn’t visit the stage before it was too late - and then threw an extended diva fit of Biblical proportions
Piers Morgan
TV show Extra reported: “Adele’s show was actually in rehearsals for five weeks, but the Grammy winner didn’t check on the progress in Vegas until last week.
“Sources say the first time she saw everything was three days before opening night and she flipped out.”
Hmmm.
So, it seems Covid was just a convenient excuse for the more likely truth, which is that Adele didn’t prepare properly and didn’t visit the stage before it was too late — and then threw an extended diva fit of Biblical proportions that culminated in her throwing her Meghan-like “What Adele wants, Adele gets!” toys out of the pram and abruptly scrapping the entire residency a day before it was due to start.
And by doing so, she destroyed God knows how many dream trips by die-hard fans who had shelled out not just on tickets, but flights and hotels, too.
One American fan posted a TikTok video which went viral in which she revealed she had flown across the Atlantic to see Adele at London’s Wembley Stadium in 2017 only for the show to be cancelled at the last minute.
Then, to make up for what had happened, her brother bought her surprise tickets to one of Adele’s first Vegas shows, and she had already flown to Sin City when that got cancelled too.
Another fan tweeted she had flown 16 hours from Australia to be there.
There must be so many similar stories, such is the devotion she inspires.
Who will compensate these poor fans for all their wasted costs?
Even Adele’s cack-handed attempts to make some pitiful amends backfired.
She FaceTimed some fans in Vegas from her luxury penthouse suite, tearfully apologising again and offering them free drink tokens, before realising many were underage.
Then, after urging people to go get her merchandise from the Caesars store, she did what all good divas do in such situations and fled Vegas on a private jet back to her Hollywood home, where she’s been hidden away ever since in magnificent, heavily cossetted luxury.
In her FaceTime exchange with fans, they began chanting: “It’s OK! It’s OK!”
But actually — it’s not OK.
Adele’s great gift used to be her rare relatability to those fans.
They believed in her because she was a working-class girl who treated them as equals.
But now she has morphed into just another staggeringly rich, privileged, pampered prima donna who thinks it’s fine to pull the plug on months of shows at a moment’s notice because she can’t get everything she demands.
The show didn’t go on for Adele — last seen on British TV a few weeks ago lapping up nauseatingly sycophantic compliments from a drooling celebrity audience — because her ego is now writing cheques her fans couldn’t even dream of cashing.
And frankly, it’s a disgrace.
If Freddie Mercury can make an album as he was literally dying, then she could probably have found the inner strength to pocket $500,000 a night to sing a few songs even if the set design wasn’t absolutely perfect.
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That would have been the right thing to do for the fans she professes to love so much.
But sadly, it would appear health-obsessed Adele’s disappeared up her rapidly diminishing celebrity backside, and no amount of weeping and wailing can change that very disappointing fact.