Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [45]
There were a few hints of the drama to come when Blake was a fresh-faced pupil at the strict Bourne Grammar School in Lincolnshire. ‘He was a bit geeky, to be honest,’ says one former classmate. ‘He wasn’t really interested in working hard but he seemed to have lots of mates and was fairly popular with the girls.’ Another fellow pupil, Mark Stoker, said, ‘Blake was cheeky and cocky but not enough to get into trouble. He wasn’t thick but just didn’t have the application to work. When he left school he moved down to London and we lost touch.’ Having tracked Blake’s infamous life since, Stoker reflects, ‘He has obviously been influenced by the music scene. He certainly never dressed like he does now when we were at school.’
Blake was, however, showing some interest in style while at school. He took an interest in hairdressing – no doubt attracting a few jibes from his fellow male pupils – and photographs of him at school reveal he had an angelic, floppy centre-parting style. His creative side also stretched to his devouring literature and dreaming of becoming a journalist. After school, he set off for the bright lights of the capital city and sent a dispatch of his glamorous new lifestyle back to his former schoolmates via the nostalgic Friends Reunited website. ‘Live in London innit,’ he wrote on his online profile. ‘Cut hair for fashion shoots, go out in town and enjoy my girlfriend lots. Academia never my forte but taking a fashion design degree at Chelsea this year and a ND in history of art. Would quite like to hear from some people and I hope I do.’
However, Blake did not need to rely on old friends from school because he had a new set of pals in the capital. One, who used to go clubbing frequently with Blake says, ‘He’s kind of a charming bad boy. He’s the sort of bloke who’s got all the chat – who’s got a little twinkle in his eye. He’ll go out and misbehave and do who knows what, but he’d never let a woman go through a door second. He’s always called a “music video assistant”, or a “gopher” but I don’t know about that. I don’t know where he gets his money from.’
He’s said to have had a number of jobs in shops and bars in north London. It was of course in a bar that he first met Amy, who was said to have been drawn to him ‘as a moth to a flame’, attracted to ‘a bit of rough’. Then came the tattoo on her chest, and, by the time she was reunited with him following her split with Claire, it looked as if the relationship was finally living up to the serious billing it received when the pair had first met. She and Blake seemed inseparable. ‘It’s like they can’t live without each other,’ said one friend. At the time, this seemed a beautiful expression of the romantic depth of the couple’s bond. It would soon take on a whole new and sinister resonance.
The first thing that Blake had to adapt to once he started dating Amy was the glare of publicity. Amy admits that he found it a challenge. ‘There’s no point in being pissed off about things you can’t control. It’s cool. It causes problems with my husband, though. He doesn’t like it,’ she has said since her marriage to Blake in May 2007. The most visible and brutal expression of this came in the shape of the paparazzi, who would follow the couple around. ‘I’m protective of Amy as any man would be of his wife,’ he has said. ‘It’s natural. To have a scrum of photographers shouting, thrusting cameras and flashing them in your face can be quite intimidating but Amy seems to have accepted this is the way her life is going to be from now on.’
Amy agrees: ‘Yes, you’re right, it can be intimidating. And it can be scary sometimes when people I don’t know seem to know me, but that’s about it really.’
Many celebrities have found that they have lost otherwise