He has since admitted: 'I was a rotten father at a time when she really needed me.'
Adele attended ten schools as her mother moved them from flat to flat, mostly around South London, trying to make ends meet with a string of jobs. Adele's Oscar triumph comes less than a week after Skyfall won her the Brit award for best single.
A few months earlier she had pulled off a Golden Globe in Hollywood for best film song as well as a statuette for best solo pop performance at the Grammys.
All this success has come as Adele underwent potentially career-wrecking throat surgery, found love with partner Simon Konecki and had her first baby, Angelo, last October.
As the ultimate award, Hollywood diva Barbra Streisand - now 70 - cooed at the Academy Awards: 'She's one of us.'
Adele struggled to hold back tears as she accepted the Oscar with song's co-writer Paul Epworth.
In her speech, she paid tribute to her management team and to Mr Konecki, saying: 'I love you baby.' Afterwards she admitted her accolades in the last few weeks had left her with a problem.
'I haven't decided where to put it [the Oscar] yet. I want it to be somewhere where I'll see it every day. Bathroom, bedroom, yeah, somewhere like that. I'll fathom it out when I get back home.'
She won't be the only Brit with space problems. Daniel Day-Lewis, 55, won his third best actor Oscar for his title role in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.
He paid tribute to the support of his wife of 16 years Rebecca Miller given his tendency to be all-consumed in the characters he plays.
She's lived with 'some very strange men', he said. 'But luckily she's the versatile one in the family and she's been the perfect companion to all of them.' Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the most Oscars won by a single actor - she was awarded four for leading actress roles.
- Daily Mail
