SARAH VINE: I pray troubled Britney has a real pal who might help her discover the happiness she actually deserves

Scrolling through Instagram the other day, my attention was caught by a woman in knee-high black boots, wide-brim hat and a thong leotard squatting in front of a roaring fire.

Standing up slowly, she tosses her dirty blonde hair, wiggles her behind, opens and closes her legs provocatively a few times, drops back down into a squat, slaps herself on the bottom and turns to face the camera. But this is not some desperate thirst trap – it’s Britney Spears, one of the most successful and iconic women in the history of pop.

It’s just the latest in a string of increasingly strange and rather sad posts. Sometimes she appears virtually naked, in others she dances with an intensity that borders on the manic. She looks and sounds (in one post she claimed to have set fire to her bathroom) borderline deranged.

I don’t say this in a mean way. I am a big fan of Spears. When she released her memoir, The Woman In Me, in 2023, I realised there was so much more to her than the giggly, somewhat vacuous pop bimbo she was cast as for all those years, or the haunted, shaven-headed train-wreck she later became. She struck me as intuitive, highly perceptive, a hard-working survivor of dysfunctional, neglectful parents and a ruthless industry.

To say she was exploited is an understatement. Aged nine, she was waiting tables in a seafood restaurant to plug the gaps in the family’s finances. By 13 she was driving (and crashing) the car, and knocking back cocktails aged 14 with her mother. By 20 she had paid off her father’s debts and bought the family a home.

‘Scrolling through Instagram the other day, my attention was caught by a woman in knee-high black boots, wide-brim hat and a thong leotard squatting in front of a roaring fire’. Pictured: Britney Spears

Cast at an early age as half-child-half-sex-kitten, put to work relentlessly in a music industry that chews girls up and spits them out, the chances of her not having some kind of a mental breakdown, as she eventually did, were always going to be fairly slim.

But having written her side of the story and finally won freedom from the conservatorship that saw her father Jamie gain full control over her life for 13 years – from the medications she took (including lithium, which made her feel drunk and befuddled) to what contraception she used – there was a sense that she might finally come into her own, head held high, Tina Turner- or Cher-style.

Instead, the opposite has happened. She seems trapped in this strange twilight zone, dancing like a second-rate stripper in her underwear with a haunted, almost pleading expression in her eyes. It’s like she’s desperate, begging, for the viewer’s approval, willing to expose any part of herself in order to get it.

‘No matter how many fans I had in the world, my parents never seemed to think I was worth much,’ she wrote in her memoir, adding: ‘Feeling like you’re never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child.’

It’s also a soul-crushing state of mind for any adult, and, watching her dance sadly in her pants for the ’gram, that is the overall impression I get. Social media is full of female pop stars like Rihanna and Lizzo and Madonna (to name a few) posting variously outrageous videos of themselves – but it feels like they’re doing it on their own terms, because they enjoy it and they’re proud of who they are. Some of them are even, arguably, a little too full of themselves, brimming with an unshakable self-belief that is not necessarily entirely justified.

Britney is the opposite. She has every right, given her colossal success and iconic status, to be super-self-assured. However, she’s anything but: her performances look and feel like cries for help, not the actions of a woman who, at 43, is in the prime of her life.

One of her most heartbreaking posts of late is one where her 18-year-old son, Jayden, the younger of her two children with her second ex-husband, Kevin Federline, executes an impressive piano solo in the marble-tiled living room of her house. ‘That’s sick!’ she squeals in her little-girl voice. ‘Oh my God! I felt it in my bones and my heart and my lungs and my a** and my throat. Hello, hello, hello, hello… woah, woah… oh God, oh God, oh God!’ It’s not the reaction of a grown woman but the response of a child.

Britney Spears with sons Jayden James Federline (left) and Sean Preston Federline (right) at LA’s Dodger Stadium in 2013

‘One of her most heartbreaking posts of late is one where her 18-year-old son, Jayden, the younger of her two children with her second ex-husband, Kevin Federline, executes an impressive piano solo in the marble-tiled living room of her house,’ writes Sarah Vine

No wonder, then, that there is growing concern for her wellbeing. Not least because, having had more than her fair share of unsuitable men in her life, who have taken advantage of her vulnerability for their own gain, she has taken up with a former handyman called Paul Soliz.

A heavy-set, heavily tattooed 37-year-old with a criminal record, Soliz has nine children. He likes to cruise around in the Mercedes G-Wagon she bought for him, and the pair are often spotted heading out to fast food joints together. It’s not exactly living the dream.

Some have suggested that the #FreeBritney movement, led by her fans, and the subsequent lifting of her legal shackles might not, after all, have been such a good idea. I wouldn’t necessarily go that far. But she is clearly not surrounding herself with people who have her best interests at heart, or she would not be exposing herself like this.

I only hope that in among those freeloaders there is a true friend who can help her find the happiness – and peace – she deserves.

Saudi Arabia has been appointed chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Yes, you read that right: Saudi Arabia. In other news, a fox has taken over the running of a hen house.

Meg’s got good taste

I get that Meghan Sussex (as we are now instructed to call her) is quite annoying, and that her narcissism in her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, is grating – still, I am surprised at the amount of genuine rage she seems to be attracting. Personally, I save my fury for genocidal maniacs like Putin, or misogynist scumbags like Kyle Clifford. 

Meghan makes her ‘one-pot pasta’ dish on With Love, Meghan, her new series on Netflix

As for the authenticity of her recipes, I can only speak for one: the much-derided ‘single skillet’ pasta. I hate to disappoint the haters, but it’s a real thing in Italy. I was taught to make it by an old friend of my mother’s, and he called it ‘strascicata’. In my recipe, you use stock, not water, but the basic principle is the same: make your sauce, add dry pasta, liquid and simmer till cooked. Delicious.

I recently started using the second-hand app Vinted.

But the other day I was locked out of my account, and was told my phone network is insufficiently secure. Given that I use a major network, this struck me as odd. Yet they won’t budge. Anyone else had a similar problem?