Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [55]
In October, Amy was up for yet another gong. This time she was nominated for the Best Album category in the Q Awards. Previous Q winners include U2, the Rolling Stones, Oasis, Coldplay, Radiohead, The Who and Arctic Monkeys. Down the years, there have been plenty of exciting moments at Q Awards ceremonies: Pogues hellraiser Shane MacGowan set Bono’s hair alight; Oasis singer Liam Gallagher attacked photographers with a steel pole and had pops at both Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Robbie Williams; Elton John had a pop at Madonna.
She was up against some formidable opposition: the previous year’s winners in this category, Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’; Kaiser Chiefs’ ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’; Arcade Fire’s ‘Neon Bible’; Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Send Away the Tigers’.
Amy didn’t attend the lunchtime ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel due to illness. Naturally, this raised eyebrows and headlines far out of proportion. The Now magazine website screamed, AMY WINEHOUSE STICKS TWO FINGERS UP AT Q AWARDS. Mark Ronson collected the award on her behalf and said, ‘That’s Amy – taking her pain and turmoil and making it into music we enjoy.’
Television star Jonathan Ross took the opportunity to crack a few jokes in the absence of Amy. He said, ‘I was on a three-to-one bet that Amy would die before Pavarotti. I’m really annoyed with Amy that I lost.’ Later on in the evening, he also joked about Led Zeppelin’s forthcoming December 2007 reunion at the O2, saying, ‘There were millions of hits on the website to register for tickets to their gig. It was probably all the Parkinson’s sufferers clicking the mouse more than they should.’ Nice!
Other winners on the night included Kate Nash, who won Breakthrough Artist; the Q Lifetime Achievement went to Johnny Marr of the Smiths; and the Q Idol was Kylie Minogue. There had been precious little controversy on the night. The best the following morning’s papers could muster was that the name of Arctic Monkeys was misspelled on their gong.
The award that Amy won became the subject of something of a mystery following the ceremony, when it went missing. Mark Ronson seemed to lose it and then there were varying reports of who had last seen it with comedians Alan Carr and Ricky Gervais rumoured to have been the last people who had laid eyes on it.
The award finally emerged and in the strangest of places. Andrew Morris, owner of Bar Soho in Old Compton Street in London’s West End, found it in the toilets of his bar in the early hours of the morning following the ceremony. ‘I thought it wasn’t real when I first saw it,’ he revealed. ‘But then I looked at the newspapers and saw the Q Awards were on last night and Amy Winehouse didn’t collect her prize.’ Then he recalled seeing Ronson partying at his bar and it all fell into place. ‘I’m sure the state Amy’s in these days I’m sure she doesn’t care too much,’ he said of his find. ‘But I’m sure the Q Awards organisers wouldn’t be too happy if it’s been left in a bar. If Amy’s getting an award she should really be there to pick it up.’ The story was run in the Metro newspaper under the headline THE Q FOR THE LOO.
Around this time, two men from the music industry took the opportunity to have a pop at Amy about her personal life. Both instances reeked of hypocrisy. Francis Rossi was one of the co-founders of the rock band Status Quo. He sang lead vocals and played lead guitar with the band. Now approaching his sixties, he likes to think of himself as an elder statesman of rock. Rossi said, ‘Amy is supposed to be great but I can’t stick her. I like a couple of records but I’m not sure if people will like her in three years. I’m not knocking her for the sake of it. But I have been subjected to so much of Amy and her antics that I just think, “Fuck off”.
‘What message does giving her Woman of the Year send to young people? There has to be some responsibility somewhere, surely. Everyone knew what was going on with