Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [74]
‘Her friends are trying to pull her the other way now she’s no longer under his influence,’ said one. ‘A number of them are over the moon he’s been locked away as it gives them a chance to work on her – but she seems determined to stick by him. Her father Mitch is keeping an eye on her as she’s so vulnerable at the moment and is known for self-harming, so there are concerns for her wellbeing. Her friends and family are worried she might do herself some harm.’
Amy’s uncle, Brian Linton, went as far as sending an email to the Sunday Mirror saying, ‘We are still worried sick about Amy but now there may be a chance to break the Svengali-like hold Blake has over her.’
Blake, meanwhile, was also trying to keep an eye on her, albeit from the confines of prison. During a telephone conversation with Amy he said, ‘For the first time in months I’ve been eating three square meals a day. I feel so much better. But you’re taking drugs, not eating and now you’re fainting. You’ve got to eat properly and stop sticking your finger down your throat. Bulimia’s taking a terrible toll on you.’ There were signs that Amy was ready to take more care of herself when she signed up for a six-month course with a yoga guru. ‘She loves the yoga, which is practised to music,’ said a friend. ‘The idea is it gives you a natural high and takes away the desire to do drugs.’
It was a week for people to come out of the woodwork and criticise Amy, using her troubles for their own ends and pinning their own issues onto her. Even Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, managed to put the boot in, blaming her for poverty in Africa. ‘Rock stars like Amy Winehouse become popular by singing “I ain’t going to rehab” even though she badly needed, and eventually sought, treatment… A sniff here and a sniff there in Europe are causing another disaster in Africa, to add to its poverty, its mass unemployment and its pandemics,’ he said.
While being held responsible for poverty in Africa, Amy was simultaneously the inspiration for a photoshoot arranged with controversial Big Brother contestant Jade Goody. So impressed is Goody by Amy that she and boyfriend Jack Tweed dressed up as Amy and Blake for the photos. Goody donned a beehive and had fake tattoos over her arm while Tweed donned a trilby hat, Blake-style.
However, what was ridiculous was the tabloid tale that held Amy responsible for the killing of a hamster, allowing the Daily Mirror to paraphrase one of tabloid journalism’s most famous headlines, screaming: AMY WINEHOUSE KILLED MY HAMSTER! (This was a nod to a celebrated Sun front-page headline of March 1986 that read, FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER, a claim later denied by both Starr and Max Clifford, the publicist behind the story.) The story concerns Peter Pepper, a former session musician for Amy.
One birthday, he received a hamster as a pet. He named it Georgie Porgie. As Pepper and Amy sank drink after drink one night, he got Georgie out to show her. Eventually, Pepper went to bed, leaving Amy still drinking. After a while, he got back up and found Amy had drunk the drinks cabinet dry. Pepper, now a member of the band Palladium, who opened for Amy at her Somerset House concert, goes on: ‘The next thing I know, Georgie bites me, runs off and Amy says she’ll catch it. I was a bit suspicious when she said she was good with hamsters. Just hours later, the hamster was stone cold and hard. I don’t know what she did to it!’
He describes the whole experience as ‘particularly traumatic’, explaining, ‘Not only did I have to deal with a dead hamster, but for some reason Amy had also managed to unplug the freezer and flooded the whole kitchen and utility room.’
Sounds like a great night!
Another great night was her next stop on the tour. In Newcastle she appeared on stage forty-five minutes late, apologised ‘from the depths of my heart’