Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [51]
Reports soon surfaced that Amy had not merely vomited over her room, but had vomited blood. A hotel worker said, ‘There was blood and vomit all over the bathroom; it was just terrible. It looked like she’d been sick many times. There was blood mixed up in the vomit. It was sickening. They were horrified by the state of the room, which looked like a bomb had hit it.’ The hotel’s manager offered to send for a doctor but Amy declined. ‘She said she’d be fine,’ said the worker. ‘Everyone was concerned because she looked so frail.’
Amy was also sick over a sofa while drinking in the restaurant at the resort. This time, the smell of her vomit was said to be so overpowering that the restaurant had to be completely closed while it was cleaned. Once it reopened, Amy caused a few concerns by reappearing with Blake. She ate a Caesar salad and Blake wolfed down a steak. They returned soon after and Amy tucked into a burger and a salad. Luckily, she managed to hold her food down. Summing up their stay, the hotel source told the Daily Mirror, ‘They’re not like our typical guests. They stand out because they’re both covered in cuts and have tattoos all over their bodies. They both behave very strangely.’
Admittedly, the newspaper headlines that screamed, AMY AND BLAKE’S BLOODBATH CONTINUES and AMY SECONDS FROM DEATH were somewhat over the top, but Amy was by this time handing new scandals to the press on a plate. It seems certain that some of the coverage was exaggerated or fabricated, but a lot of it was accurate. For the press – who had grown tired of Pete Doherty since he split with Kate Moss, and with David Beckham, who was LA-bound – Amy was proving to be the new tabloid obsession. Once the tabloids have their claws into someone, it rarely ends in anything but tears for their victim. The press have without doubt made up a lot of the coverage they have awarded Amy and Blake’s relationship, especially about their hedonism and alleged weight issues.
All too often, Blake has been cast as the bad guy. ‘He’s not very good for her on a professional level,’ Sky News entertainment man Neil Sean said, ‘but she’s so hooked in deep she can’t stop the – I suppose – the love that she’s got for him.’
However, jumping to this conclusion seems unfair on both Blake and Amy. Whatever his failings, Blake has stuck by Amy’s side and is clearly besotted with his lady. Moreover, to cast Amy as his unwitting victim insults her, casting her as a helpless little lady. All the evidence of Amy’s life suggests she is far away from this. ‘I think those close to us know the truth,’ says Blake. ‘It’s not one long drink-and-drug party for us, and, as for the weight issues, it’s just not like that – we’re actually quite a nice and normal couple at home.’
Amy echoed Blake’s attempt to portray them as a normal couple. ‘I’m sorted out. Nothing’s wrong with me… A lot of fuss has been made about nothing,’ she shrugged.
Mitchell hoped that these ‘all is fine’ statements were accurate, though his hope was not without qualification: ‘I don’t know what they’ve been doing for the last month or so. We’d like to think that she and Blake have stayed clean since they went to St Lucia. But the thing with drug addicts is that they rarely tell you the truth.’
Happily, before long the tabloids were forced to write a positive story about Amy when she collected yet more laurels. At the MOBO awards, she was handed the Best Female Singer gong. At the O2 arena (formerly the Millennium Dome), she sang ‘Me and Mr Jones’ and ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’. When she took to the stage to collect her award, she kept her speech short and sweet, merely saying thank you and then returning to her table. She couldn’t be blamed for being so short: after all that had been written about her in recent months, Amy was just keen to avoid further controversy.
On the same night,