Brian Boydon music
A few months ago, the bookmakers William Hill began offering odds on Amy Winehouse not turning up to do her live shows. As "novelty" bets go, it probably seemed like a good laugh at the time, but the 23-year-old singer was very upset about how her behavioural and drink/drug problems were being played out for the public's entertainment. It soon became quite the thing in polite indie society to refer to Winehouse as "Sid" and to her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, as "Nancy".
The press attention she has received since cancelling her US tour last week has taken her out of the Jools Holland-endorsed serious musician category (which is how she started) and into front-page tabloid news as she does her best female Pete Doherty impression.
More people would know now that earlier this month, on a colossal bender, she allegedly took heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine (washed down by whiskey and vodka) than would know what her two albums are called. The one-person soap opera is feeding itself, facilitated by Winehouse and her husband's habit of playing out their "domestics" in full public view. Last week, as Winehouse herself revealed, she was in a London hotel room preparing to do a bag full of drugs with a call girl (we've all been there) when her husband showed up and there was a "frank exchange of views" which resulted in a very bloody Winehouse and a badly scratched (if not mauled) husband being pictured on pages two, three, four and five.
The situation has now deteriorated to the extent that both her parents and Fielder-Civil's parents are attempting a rather crude form of "intervention" via radio phone-in shows. Fielder-Civil's father obviously thought it would be a good idea to ring up those well-known addiction and relationship counsellors at BBC Radio Five Live to speak about his daughter-in-law. Saying he was concerned that the singer and his son would die without medical help, he called for the public to boycott Winehouse's records, saying: "Perhaps it's time to stop buying them - it might send her a message."
Winehouse's father then entered the fray, again through the medium of talk radio, when he said that the pictures of his daughter and his son-in-law showed "two people out of control". He added that a boycott of his daughter's records wouldn't help and that her recent behaviour had left people at her record company "in tears".
Now that her family have had their say, her employers, the Island music label, have decided to row in also. They released a statement saying: "We have been doing everything we can to help with Amy's personal problems over the past few weeks. She has our full support - professionally, emotionally and financially. We've advised her to take complete rest during this difficult period and have put all her promotional commitments on hold."
Amy Winehouse is a very talented musician who also happens to have had a serious eating disorder and who, by her own admission, has difficulties with drink and drugs. It would quite obviously be a good thing if the woman and her husband realised that their behaviour was causing them a lot of damage and they sought out whatever help is needed. Until that time arrives (if it does arrive), discussing her problems on talk radio is merely fanning the flames.
We have been here many times before. We know how this story will play out and we know who can do a rewrite on the ending. Everyone else is wasting their time. And ours. Does no one ever learn anything?
