own. I felt so sorry for her. I managed to cheer her up a bit with some of my boyhood stories and ‘Mitchellisms’ though, and it wasn’t long before I had her laughing.
I told her that after my father passed away, a friend of his, Sammy Soroff, had come to see me. ‘He said to me, “I’ve come for the money your father Alec owes me.” Now, I didn’t know what he was on about, and I was only young so I didn’t know what to do. Sammy said, “Your dad and I went up north to do a bit of business, and I paid the whole bill. Your dad never paid me back. I want my money.” Now I was really worried – how could I afford to pay him back? I said I’d find a way one day to pay the debt. And to this day I still owe it to him.’
Amy was entranced, and I knew I had her when she asked, ‘How much do you owe Uncle Sammy, Dad? I’ll give it to you.’
‘Oh, about forty pounds,’ I replied, laughing, and she got it, and laughed too.
I believed that getting Amy out of Camden Town might help her get her confidence back; I also knew her whole family would be happier if she was away from that environment, so a few days later I started house- hunting. I looked at some very decent places, all just outside London, in Rickmansworth, Hemel Hempstead and Hadley Wood. I thought any of them would be great, but Amy was more concerned about how she would get her next dose of Subutex.
I talked to Raye about the possibility of Amy not being able to sing at the V Festival, but we decided to leave it until the last minute to make a decision. Raye had also had an offer for Amy to do a big concert in Rio on New Year’s Eve.
‘Right now, she won’t leave Camden,’ I said. ‘How the hell are we going to get her to Rio?’
In the end Raye managed to persuade her onto the tour bus for the V Festival. She came onstage about half an hour late, but performed pretty well. The next day she was late onstage again, but Raye said she was very well received by the huge audience. He thought she was stupendous that night and had nailed it. When I watched it on TV, I’d have called her performance average.
Once Amy was back in Prowse Place the same problems returned. She was still anxious about going out and Dr Tovey had to visit her at home to prescribe more Subutex. One day she was planning to go to the gym for some much-needed exercise, but she got to the front door and couldn’t leave the house. Her mental state was getting worse day by day. Most of her doctors had washed their hands of her as she wouldn’t listen to them. I was rapidly losing confidence in her current treatment regime, and needed to come up with new ideas and methods. I rang round my pals and got the jungle drums beating.
Amy was also having rows with lots of her friends. I heard from Jevan that Geoff had been around again, although he hadn’t given her any drugs, and Lauren was giving her a hard time about how she was handling her recovery. Some of Amy’s clean friends weren’t supporting her. She was always on her own and they’d given her no credit for embarking on the drug-replacement programme that appeared to be helping her recover. In the end, they had their view of how she should handle it, and I had mine. We agreed to differ.
To add to our troubles, I discovered that, over the last couple of months, Amy had used her debit card to draw seven thousand pounds from her account. I felt sure that this was a payment for drugs – what else could it be? I was trying to convince myself that it was for an old drug debt, but later that day Andrew called to say a new drug-dealer had managed to get into the house. Apparently Amy had called him, and welcomed him at the front door as an old friend. ‘I fear that Amy is back on drugs.’ I wrote in my diary that night. ‘Here we go again.’
We could find a way to stop Amy withdrawing cash, but if she was still determined to get hold of drugs she’d find a way. In the end I confronted her about it and told her I knew that huge sum had been spent on drugs. She went mad, and we had a bit of a row, but eventually she admitted she had paid other people’s drugs bills, and assured me it would never happen again.
We still had the problem of Amy’s remaining gigs. She had three more booked and she was supposed to be focusing on her new album. The first was in France. Raye had managed to get Amy out of the house, and they were on the Eurostar together, when Blake phoned her from prison and told her not to do the gig. It seemed Amy would do anything that Blake said. He told her she was being bullied into it and she shouldn’t go. As the train was about to pull out of the station, Amy got off, jumped over the barrier and into a cab to Prowse Place. The no-show ended up costing 150,000 euros.
After that, Raye cancelled her performance at the GQ Awards. Amy wasn’t in a good state, but she was livid, protesting that she was well enough to go. She wasn’t. And she was blaming everyone but herself for her inability to perform. She told me that she was totally bored with her life and wanted to move away from Camden Town. But when I said I had properties for her to view, she said she wasn’t up to it. I went outside and kicked the wall. My plan had been to find a place where she had enough space and privacy to write and record at home, so that when she didn’t go out at least she could be working. I wanted her to get over her boredom by finding new inspiration, away from Camden. That she chose not even to consider the options was infinitely frustrating.
I was also worrying about Blake being able to stake a claim on Amy’s money. He had told me again that he definitely wanted a divorce and was going to send me a visiting order so we could discuss it. If Blake went through the courts he might be awarded a cash sum from Amy on their divorce. I wanted to avoid this, but Amy’s accountant, Margaret Cody, said it would be very difficult to obtain a protection order to stop Blake getting his hands on Amy’s money. And if we did that we might alienate Amy. We had to find an alternative.
The next day when I saw Amy she looked and sounded a lot better. One day she was at death’s door and the next she was fine. She was sticking to the Subutex regime, but I suspected she was also taking other stuff.
The last of Amy’s scheduled gigs was on the Isle of Wight. Amy was responsible for the costs of production, staff, her band, travelling and other expenses, which amounted to some ?96,000. She was being paid ?150,000 for the gig. But if there was another no-show, the ?96,000 would still have to be paid. I was concerned that Blake would phone her at the last minute and tell her not to go. Thankfully, she made it onstage, albeit half an hour late, and the show went very well.
That was the last of her live shows for the foreseeable future and I was glad, but I couldn’t read how Amy felt about it and had no idea how she’d fill the gap. At least they had kept her active, when she was becoming so depressed and lonely. Now she was meant to be spending all her time on the new album, but I felt we might be entering a dangerous period. It seemed that Amy’s drug habit was diminishing, and I felt incredibly positive about that – she always took her Subutex – but I found it hard to understand why she was still doing drugs if the Subutex was working. I asked Amy about it repeatedly, but she had no answer for me. I found out later, from talking to other recovering addicts, that this is often the way.
With things looking up with Amy, Jane and I took a much-needed break in Tenerife. When we got back there were new problems: Blake was rearing his head once again.
He was being released with a tag. I was devastated, but Amy was very pleased, saying she’d put him on Subutex and was going to help him get clean. I knew that if he and Amy ever got back together, Subutex would become the poor relation and they would be back on drugs in no time at all. Meanwhile, Amy still didn’t know that Blake intended to divorce her; if she did, she kept very quiet about it. I wanted Blake out of the picture, but if he went ahead with the divorce before Amy was clean, there was every chance that she would flip out and we’d be back where we’d started – or worse. It was a lose-lose situation, really.
Blake wasn’t released when he was supposed to be because the police were concerned about the drugs goings-on in Prowse Place, his named address. He was told he could be released to Georgette’s address, but he said he’d rather stay in prison. When she heard that, Amy was beside herself and told me she wanted to find a new house immediately. Then she had a really bright idea: she wanted Blake to be released to my house. I was totally gobsmacked. She couldn’t understand why I said no.
A few days later we had a bit of good news. Raye spoke to Blake’s solicitor and discovered Blake wouldn’t be released until the end of his sentence on 6 September 2009, a whole year away. That
I had arranged to talk to Russell Brand about Amy and met him at his house in Hampstead, north London. He is a recovering addict and gave me some very helpful advice about her situation. He was impressed that she was sticking to the Subutex, and introduced me to his drug counsellor, Chip Somers. I set up an appointment to
