Amy, mea culpa

Although it may seem hypocritical given my first ever post, I couldn't help but feel very sad when I read the report about Amy Winehouse's shambolic performance (or more precisely, lack thereof) at G-A-Y on Saturday night. She was clearly off her face on the Friday Night Project the night before, and I doubt she'd even sobered up from that bout of drinking before embarking on the one that saw her so publicly shamed in front of two thousand baying gays. Queuing for Ghetto on Saturday we saw the steps to the stage door at G-A-Y being sluiced down with soapy water and joked that Amy had probably thrown up on the way in; if only we'd known the half of it...

When I wrote that first post, I really was amused - yes, amused is the right word - at how she'd behaved on Char's Show. Thinking it was a one-off, I found it hilarious that anyone could be so downright irresponsible as to get twatted before filming a TV appearance (albeit not a 'live' one as claimed.) I sent my account of that night's events to Holy Moly and it made the headline story, and wasn't I pleased with myself about that? But that of course was before I faced up to my own problems with drink and now, far from finding Amy's crazy-bitch antics entertaining, I find them saddening.

I can't help but wonder what the fuck the people around her are doing. Sure, Amy's problems are hers alone and the only person who can tell Amy that she has a problem is Amy. A friend with a drink problem, or any kind of addiction, is like the apocryphal elephant in the room; everyone will gladly talk around it but only the very brave will talk about it. But besides her friends, surely Amy's record company, manager, agent, stylist, hairdresser (yes I'm sure she has one, despite appearances), driver and so on who should be asking themselves what the hell they're doing to earn their money if they let Amy go on stage like that. It must have been obvious that she wasn't fit to perform on Charlotte Church, Buzzcocks, Friday Night Project and now G-A-Y and that if she did she would humiliate herself, and yet no-one has seemingly had the guts or, more to the point, the simple human kindness to say, 'No, sorry love. You can't go on tonight. We'll tell 'em you've got flu,' before giving her the mother of all bollockings in the hope that she will admit to herself, as only she can, that something must be done. If they think that by letting her go on stage pissed out of her beehive-topped head every night, she'll sooner or later learn her lesson, then they are being at best naive and at worst downright cruel. More likely is that the more bad press she gets for turning up smashed, the more disillusioned and paranoid Amy will become, fuelling more drinking in search of the - to her - blissful abandonment that liquor in sufficient quantities brings.

I titled that first post 'Amy needs rehab.' I'm not sure it's rehab that Amy needs now, but she sure needs something. Maybe someone really close to be brave enough to tell her she has a problem. Maybe to have that one flash of clarity where one realises for oneself that something is wrong. Maybe she just needs someone to hold her and love her and tell her that everything's going to be alright. Whatever it is Amy Winehouse needs, I hope she gets it before it's too late. From me, she gets an apology for not knowing then what I know now - that there's nothing funny about being a drunk.

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!