Lily Allen says she was failed by police over seven-year stalking ordeal

Singer Lily Allen said that she felt like a "nuisance rather than a victim" by police investigating a stalker who broke into her bedroom as she slept and harassed her for seven years.

Allen, 30, said the campaign of harassment left her feeling "isolated" from friends and family and "a changed person".

She revealed horrifying details of her ordeal at the hands of Alex Gray, who barged into her bedroom as she and her children slept, said he wished to stab her through the face and spent nights lurking in her garden.

She added that she was denied the support she expected from police and said that evidence she handed them as far back as 2009 that supported her case had been destroyed.

Speaking to The Observer after Alex Gray, the stranger who threatened her life, was convicted of harassment and breaking into her home, she said: "It was not special attention I looked for. It was reassurance and validation. The police made me feel like a nuisance, rather than a victim."

Her nightmare began in 2009 when Gray, a man in his early 20s from Perth, using the Twitter handle @lilyallenRIP claimed to have written one of her hits, The Fear.

He went on to send abusive messages and suicide threats in letters to her flat, her sister's home, her record company, and her management, that were in turn handed to police.

When someone held up a banner during a gig that read "I wrote The Fear", she called officers again who lent her a panic alarm for a few months before they took it back, she said.

The stalker progressed to banging on her door and spending nights in her back garden, before a terrifying incident on October 13 last year when she awoke in the early hours to find Gray bursting into her bedroom.

A friend managed to force Gray from the property and he made off with her handbag.

When she called police, they were "uncomfortable" with the suggestion it was her stalker and wanted to pursue an isolated burglary investigation, she told the newspaper.

Then, when she found the handbag burned on the bonnet of her car Gray was eventually caught and charged with burglary.

Gray, now 30, was eventually charged with burglary and harassment, although the stalking count reportedly did not cover anything before 2015.

He was convicted at Harrow Crown Court this month and will be sentenced in May.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman would not comment on Allen's case but said they take stalking and harassment "extremely seriously".