Orange judges admit Lily was dropped

The organisers of the Orange Prize for Fiction have finally come clean about Lily Allen's sudden departure from its judging panel 10 days ago. At the time there was a lot of soft soap from all parties to do with the singer's work and family pressures. Kirsty Lang, who is chairing the jury for the £30,000 prize, said then: "Lily has put in a lot of work on the reading and brought a unique perspective to the judging process and we're really sorry to be losing her at this stage."

It now transpires that the 22-year-old had not put in that much work. Lang admits Allen took part in the drawing up of the longlist "by phone" and that she had been dropped from the jury after missing a couple of crucial meetings.

None of this will surprise readers of the gossip columns; at times it seems Allen is incapable of spending a night in washing her hair, let alone curling up with a good book.

However, at a London reception on Tuesday to announce the six short-listed authors, among them Rose Tremain and Charlotte Mendelson, Lang had only sympathy for Allen. "Life got in the way," she explained. "She lost a baby, her boyfriend left her and she was launching a new TV show. She found the pressure of judging a major book prize on top of everything else too much."