Goodbye Amy

I have been following the tragic news of Amy Winehouse’s death. You always had a fear that this was going to be the way her life would end.

I met her she over New Year 2010 when she was visiting her friend Anthony Kavanagh who was staring alongside me, Bobby Davro and US Actor Micky Rooney in Milton Keynes. Her visit was much reported in the press on TV even making it over the pond due to the aforementioned playing Baron Hard-Up. To cut a very long story short she was asked to leave the theatre for heckling (I thought that’s what you did at a Panto?) and in the process she took a swipe at the front of house manager. Now I’m not condoning her actions but if you saw the size of him next to her you would laugh and the fact he called the police was embarrassing. Still, by the time the story got out the exaggeration machine had been working overtime and it bore little resemblance to the small kafuffle that actually took place. During the interval she was in Kav’s dressing room which was next to mine and somehow she had cut herself… so in my red Fairy Godmother costume I went in with my first aid kit to clean her up. It was actually microphone tape and cotton wool and some cleanser (even I’m not that organised). I always take people as I find them as God knows I’ve had enough gossips that have opinions on me and we’ve never met. In that little room I met Amy;  tiny, sweet, pretty, funny, and when she wrapped her arms around you she was like a child you just wanted to hold and protect. She was grateful for my attempts to clean her up and later went back to her seat with her supposed ‘Minder’ in tow.

Her life was a pantomime full of goodies, baddies, weakness and strength. I felt a real pain and sadness when I learnt she’d died, but I believe that with the legacy of her music and the foundation her father is going to create in Amy’s name to help other drug addicts fight this destructive path, there will somehow be a happy ending.