Amy had caught me by surprise and I didn’t know quite what to say, so I decided to start at the beginning. ‘Hi, George, what’s the problem?’
‘I’m in agony,’ he told me. ‘My hernia’s ruptured.’ As a result, he literally couldn’t move, but this was only the start of the problems. His family couldn’t afford to pay for medical care and it was almost like he had been left to die on the beach. I could see a huge lump in George’s stomach and his pain was written on his face. He was a pitiful sight.
‘George,’ Amy said, helping him to his feet, ‘we’re going to get you to a hospital straight away.’
George couldn’t walk, so our security boys carried him to our car and we drove him to Tapion hospital. All the way there George moaned with pain and Amy stroked his head and told him he was going to be okay.
We got to the hospital, the same one Amy had been in when she’d had a seizure a few weeks earlier. She made sure he got the best possible treatment and instructed the doctor that he was not to be let out of hospital until he was completely better, then explained that we would be footing the bill. I asked the doctor how much it was going to cost and he told me that the operation and aftercare would come to about five thousand dollars. I paid the hospital, said goodbye to George and we drove back to the villa.
There, Amy asked me to go with her to see another guy on the beach. ‘If this guy’s got a ruptured hernia, he’s out of luck,’ I told her. ‘I’ve only got three thousand left.’
He wasn’t sick: he owned seven horses, which he rented to tourists to ride up and down the beach. Amy told me that she owed him some money. I introduced myself and asked how much Amy owed him. To my disbelief, the answer was fifteen thousand dollars. Amy had discovered that the local St Lucian kids, who regularly played on the beach, couldn’t afford to rent horses from the man so she’d rented all of his horses, seven days a week, from dawn to dusk for a month, and let the kids ride for free, telling him, ‘My dad’ll pay you when he next comes over.’
I told the man I had just three thousand dollars. ‘That’ll do!’ he said.
I’d only been on St Lucia for about four hours and the eight thousand dollars was gone. But, it was worth every penny: Amy was so happy that we could help those people.
We had a lovely supper together, just the two of us. Amy had started to put some weight back on and she was looking very well. My only concern was that she drank a lot that evening, and while she wasn’t drunk, when we said goodnight she was well on the way.
A couple of days later I flew home. Shortly after I’d got back, Raye and I went to a preliminary hearing of Amy’s Prince’s Trust Ball common-assault charge. The prosecution’s case seemed weak, but our concern was more about Amy’s volatility. After the hearing, our barrister told me that when Amy was in court she had to be respectful or the judge might find against her. When I told Amy what he had said, she replied, ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll show respect and behave myself. You know I can do it if I want to.’
That made me worry more, especially because she sounded as if she had been drinking.
Amy arrived home on 13 July, and when we talked about the impending court case, it was clear she was quite nervous. All she had to do was tell the truth, be respectful and courteous, I said, and, with a bit of luck, justice would prevail.
The night before the hearing, having learned long ago that you could never get Amy anywhere on time, I arranged for Amy and me to stay at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Buckingham Gate, central London, to ensure we wouldn’t be late the following day at nearby Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Despite all of my planning, we were still late.
Amy was quite nervous as the court heard burlesque dancer Sherene Flash claim that Amy had hit her forcefully in the right eye after she had asked for a photograph while backstage at the Prince’s Trust ball. Amy told the court that she had felt intimidated and scared by Flash when she leaned over and put her arm around her and denied punching her in the face. Amy said, ‘I pushed her up, like away. I wanted her away from me. It was more like an indication of “Leave me alone, I’m scared of you.” I meant to just get her away from me. I was scared. I thought, people are mad these days, people are just rude and mad, or people can’t handle their drink. I didn’t know what she was doing. She lunged at me and put her arm around me. She was just drunk. I think it was just intimidating. Suddenly out of nowhere she’s got her arm round me, her face next to mine, and there’s a camera in front of me. I think she was being overly friendly but that was intimidating. I was scared. I’m not Mickey Mouse, I’m a human being.’
The next day Amy was found not guilty and, delivering his verdict, District Judge Timothy Workman said, ‘Having heard the evidence from all the witnesses, I cannot be sure that this was not an accident. The charge is dismissed and the defendant discharged.’
As this was all unfolding, there was the usual deluge of stories about Amy in the press. On 19 July the
I went to Focus 12 again, on 22 July, and Jazz and Richard filmed me in a parents’ meeting. I was beginning to learn just how difficult it was to get help for addiction if you couldn’t afford to pay for it.
Jane and I went to Spain for a few days, and when we arrived back in England, in early August, Amy looked good and wasn’t drinking, although I’d heard lots of stories of her getting out of control while I was away. I went to see her at Hadley Wood and found her on her exercise bike; I felt tired just watching her. She told me she hadn’t been drinking for the previous few days and felt better for it. And while Blake had been calling her a lot, she hadn’t spoken to him. I immediately called Brian Spiro and asked him to write to Blake’s solicitor and get him to stop Blake calling Amy. This stage of her recovery was nothing if not fragile, and if one thing seemed certain to derail it, it was Blake.
Blake stayed in the picture, continuously trying to contact Amy and even getting her to agree to meet him at the Hawley Arms in Camden, where he failed to show up. In mid-August there was a story in the
‘One minute you don’t want to talk to Blake,’ I said to her, ‘and the next minute you’re arranging to meet him. Just tell me what you want to do.’
She was smart and knew exactly what I was worried about. ‘Dad, I’ll never take drugs again, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she said, laughing.
Amy was true to her word when it came to drugs. But her drinking was still a constant worry to me. In late August, she joined the Specials on stage at the V Festival in Chelmsford, Essex, and sang a couple of songs with them. She looked and sounded great, and as far as I could tell, there was no drink on the stage. After the show Amy said she had enjoyed herself and stayed sober throughout.
The following Monday, I met American Blake, who had been with Amy at the V Festival. Apparently one of her former drug-dealers had spoken to her there but, true to her word, she hadn’t done any business with him. I told him that didn’t surprise me but wondered whether Amy had been drinking over that weekend. He said she hadn’t touched a drop before her performance, but afterwards she’d ‘had a skinful’, as he put it.
Amy knew that I had sung semi-professionally throughout my twenties. After I got married, and the kids came along, I did fewer and fewer gigs. But I always intended to go back to it and Amy was always encouraging me to do it. She said a number of times that I should make an album. So when Tony Hiller, a hugely successful songwriter and producer, approached me with the same idea, Amy said, ‘Go for it, Dad.’ Her input was invaluable to me on all aspects of my singing. In the same way that my mum had been Amy’s biggest fan, it seemed to me that Amy was
She and I went together to Tony’s flat one hot summer’s evening to discuss the album and Amy spotted a shelf full of Ivor Novello awards.
‘How many have you got, Tony?’ she asked. Six, he said. ‘Aaah, I’ve only got three.’ Amy was never one to boast, but she was always proud of her Ivor Novello awards.
When we’d finished, I took her to Reubens kosher restaurant where I ate a lot, as usual, and so did she,
