Please Amy, save yourself

Nov 19 2007 by Andrew Flynn, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

I HAVE a feeling of immense sadness for Amy Winehouse.

Yes, I know she has problems with drugs and alcohol and doesn’t seem to be very good at choosing her friends.

But unlike most people who find it difficult to cope with fame and fortune she has a breathtaking talent.

Her songs are brilliant and her voice one in a billion.

My daughter, Sian, bought me her Back To Black album for my birthday in May. Until then I had never listened to her music.

I had read news stories about her, wondered at the sense of all those tattoos on a pretty girl and dismissed her as a male equivalent of a certain Master Docherty, who seems to see himself as a new age Byron but without the poetry, ability or looks.

But one play of her CD and I was blown away. This was an artist, even at such a young age, to stand comparison with great jazz vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

One can only hope she finds salvation from the tragedy she is living to enjoy life and music without addiction before she self- destructs.