Cartoon Junkie Heckled

Posted on November 16, 2007
Filed Under Celebrity Gossip |

There are few things more tedious than the antics of an addled drunk or drug addict. A minor saving grace is that these embarrassments usually happen more or less in private. They are mostly associated with teenage experimentation and peer-pressure and are soon outgrown.

When they become the central theme of public performances, however, the polite yawn becomes a communal tut or raised eyebrow of disapprobation.

It should be noted here that my total exposure to the Amy Winehouse experience has been listening to part of “Rehab” when stumbling upon a wireless station whose listeners were probably mainly grannies wearing tweed twinsets and pearls.

The song seemed monotonous and vocally indecipherable, childishly purporting to shock and probably too long, but it was heard by accident rather than design. It was only later that the song became paired in my mind with the cardboard cut-out of a tattooist’s window-display on which someone has piled their discarded knitting: an image which I later again discovered was Amy Winehouse.

The chanteuse has, apparently, like all and sundry other nonentities, something in the way of a drink and drug problem, which perhaps makes the song Rehab somewhat autobiographical.

Be all this as it may, she apparently slurred and stumbled her way through most of a concert in Birmingham until the crowd booed and walked out and she staggered off stage mid-song.

She is supposed to have said: “First of all, if you’re booing you’re a mug for buying a ticket. Second, to all those booing, just wait till my husband gets out of incarceration. And I mean that.”

A few points. It was probably not only those booing who were mugs for buying tickets: why deprive the rest of the crowd their mugdom? “Gets out of incarceration” is somewhat quaint, but sounds more illiterate than simply ‘jail’ or ‘prison’.

The problem is the last bit. Is it, to use the old playground conundrum, a threat or a promise? Is she saying that her imprisoned husband (something to do with assault and perverting the course of justice) is going to track down those who booed and beat them up? It will hardly help his case if this is so. Or does she mean her lacklustre performance will improve when she has her true love by her side?

The simple fact, probably, is that once people have witnessed the slow-motion car-crash of a drug-sodden, drink-riddled artiste on a spiral of decline, the experience is just too boring for them to want to repeat it.

So, Amy, no need for you to ask your husband to get out of jail in a hurry. You will probably find nobody will be waiting.

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