The day I saw Britney Spears Father Pull a knife

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Britney Spears appears to have undergone a remarkable transformation. Less than a year ago, her reign as America’s favourite pop princess had descended into ghoulish soap opera.

Her bizarre drink and drug-fuelled behaviour had led to doubts about her sanity, she had lost custody of her two young sons to former husband Kevin Federline, and she had been forcibly taken to a psychiatric ward in Los Angeles after a stand-off with police.

Last week, however, she celebrated her 27th birthday with a smile on her face and a hit single, Womanizer, near the top of the charts.

Once shaven-headed and bloated from a diet of junk food and alcohol, Britney again looks toned and fit. Her recent appearance on X Factor during a whirlwind trip to London drew a record audience for the show.

The man credited as the architect of one of pop music’s most extraordinary comebacks is none other than Britney’s father, Jamie.

The 56-year-old former builder, who is divorced from Britney’s mother Lynne, was granted control over the star’s business affairs and appointed her ‘conservator’ – the equivalent of a child’s guardian for an adult – at a court hearing last February, shortly after her discharge from hospital.

This effectively handed Spears control over his daughter’s life and there is no doubt he takes the role seriously. His first act was to cut her off from an aide who was allegedly plying his daughter with pills. He ordered a halt to the spending sprees that were draining Britney’s fortune and made sure she kept away from the sleazy clubs and hangers-on who could drag her back to her old self-destructive habits.

He also masterminded her extraordinary return to the recording studio and stage. Britney has just released her sixth album, Circus, and will embark on a world tour in the New Year that is expected to earn in excess of £150million.

Yet something about her performance on X Factor – she lip-synched badly, danced unconvincingly and appeared stunned when asked about the relative merits of the contestants – suggests that all is not quite as it seems.

Insiders on her mini-tour of Germany, France and Britain revealed that the star lives in a bubble designed to maximise her potential as a money-making machine as well as physically separate her from all temptation – whether that be drugs, alcohol, junk food or men.

But Britney’s friends are worried that the regime imposed by her father does little for her fragile state of mind. They say that in private she confesses to feeling pressurised to perform, frequently dissolves in tears and has a volatile love-hate relationship with her father.

They also question whether Jamie Spears, a former bankrupt and recovering alcoholic whose only business experience is a failed building company is a suitable person to exercise such iron control over a very vulnerable young woman.

Certainly the Spears I met seven years ago at his isolated bungalow on a dirt road in rural Kentwood, Louisiana, didn’t seem the most sensitive of souls. In a terrifying encounter that lasted four hours, Britney’s father subjected me to a hostile drunken monologue while refusing to let me leave.

Britney performing on X Factor

Every time I got up to go, he picked up a large carving knife and theatrically stabbed it into the wooden table at which we were sitting.

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