Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [40]
‘That was a great gig for me… It was brilliant. I really, really like that place. There aren’t that many venues that have a pool table downstairs, you know. I put money on the side of the table and came back for my game, and these guys were playing. I was like, “Oi, I put my coin down,” and they were like, “No, you didn’t.” I took off before someone hit me with a pool cue.’
On 6 January 2007, Amy was booked to perform at G-A-Y, the gay night at London’s Astoria venue at 157 Charing Cross Road. There is a companion bar a mere mince away on the famous Old Compton Street. The club, hosted by Jeremy Joseph, is perhaps the UK’s leading gay night. Attracting a poppy, youthful crowd, it has been the venue for numerous big-name musicians down the years. Kylie Minogue has performed there, as have Westlife, Donna Summer, the Spice Girls and Boyzone. Such appearances often capture the imagination of the media, whether it is reports of teenage girls who are heartbroken to learn that their pin-ups are playing to a gay crowd, or McFly’s always memorable performances there, which have seen them both strip and set their own pubic hair alight. Indeed, if you want to get a gay following and create a stir in the press, you could do a lot worse than book yourself in at G-A-Y.
For weeks, the venue had been trumpeting Amy’s forthcoming appearance with the slogan, TRY TO MAKE ME GO TO REHAB/I SAY NO, NO, NO… TRY TO MAKE ME GO TO G-A-Y/I SAY YES, YES, YES. Given Amy’s huge popularity in the gay community, the night seemed set to become an absolute triumph and tickets for the night were quickly snapped up by excited fans. This disproved the whispers in some circles that Amy either was – or was perceived by some gay men to be – homophobic. The rumour sprang from the line in ‘Stronger Than Me’ when Amy asks her weakling boyfriend if he is gay. The truth, as we have seen, is that Amy meant no offence to any gay man with this line and none was taken in any serious quarter. In the event, while Amy did not in fairness set light to her pubic hair, nor strip naked, she managed to capture the following day’s headlines in her own way.
One person present described Amy as looking ‘a little unsteady on her feet’ and ‘smelling of booze’ when she arrived at the venue at around midnight. At 1.30 a.m., club host Jeremy Joseph strode onto the stage and warmly introduced Amy to the cheering masses. After a brief delay, she took to the stage and was greeted by a deafening welcome. The band launched into ‘Back to Black’ and all seemed well for a while.
Then Amy started repeatedly holding her stomach and grimacing with discomfort. She also appeared to belch or heave a couple of times, holding her hand to her mouth and looking a little wobbly. By the time it came to the final chorus of the opening track, she was interrupting her own vocals and seemed extremely disoriented. Before the song even finished, she rushed from the stage holding her stomach. Joseph quickly replaced her on the stage and told the confused audience that Amy was vomiting and asked them to bear with her. ‘But she never came back. Everyone was booing,’ said one audience member. Eventually, news came through that she was not returning to the stage and heckles joined in with the boos. Some audience members stamped their feet.
The story was quickly put out by Amy’s people that her ill health was not alcohol-related but was actually the result of food poisoning. She told a journalist the following morning as she nursed a smoothie, ‘I haven’t had a drink in a few days.’ Not that many folk were in a mood to believe this story. As journalist Kitty Empire quipped in the Guardian, ‘The nation’s water coolers, Soho pubs, message boards and gossip websites rattled with a collective snort of derision.’ Instead, many preferred to believe the other explanation doing the rounds: that Amy had spent the day drinking heavily with Kelly Osbourne. The pair have