Amy Needs Rehab...

Went to see the recording of The Charlotte Church Show last night ('Live from Cardiff' my big gay ginger arse) and Char's musical guest was one Miss Amy Winehouse. All Amy had to do was sit on the sofa between Keith Allen and Rhod Gilbert (no me neither) and read a couple of the pitifully unfunny 'What we learned this week' bits, then disappear to the green room for a couple hours until the grand finale - a duet with La Church of 'Beat It'. Whine-house - already only semi-coherent during the sofa bit - clearly used those couple of hours to partake liberally of the 'fruit and flowers' in her dressing room, because when finally the moment came for CC to announce 'the fabulous Amy Winehouse', aforementioned horse-faced narcotic-Dustbuster walked very, very slowly to the front of the stage, lifted the mic to her contorted mouth to sing and...couldn't form words. She slurred her way through the first take, which Our Lady of Church - taking pity on Amy as one might on a dying animal - cut short.

A couple of minutes later, take two was barely as successful, although Winehouse did at least manage to make Elephant Man-like noises at vaguely the right points in the song - because each time it was her turn to 'sing', Churchy prodded her in the back. No, seriously. Sweetly, at the end of take 2, when Crackhouse was facing away from the camera, Char took the initiative to gently turn her around - a service required on take 3 as well.

By the end of the third take it was clear to all present that there was no way it was going to get any better. If someone at Channel 4 is actually able to edit those three attempts into something even vaguely less car crash than George Best on Wogan, they deserve every award going. My gut feeling is that, barring a re-shoot today (if Char's willing to ever be in the same room as Wino again) we won't actually be seeing our Amy come Friday night (live from Cardiff remember) at all. It was pure, unadulterated, being-there-at-the-dying-moment-of-a-career, genius. To finally summarise just how bad she was in a nutshell: she couldn't even form the words 'Beat It', instead slurring something that sounded a lot like'Beer' at roughly the right moment.

And her with a new single out called 'Rehab'...oh theirony!