Amy, My Daughter

expensive luxury’. Their solution was to treat people in the community where, for example, heroin addicts were given methadone; that, however, just produces methadone addicts, and methadone deaths are increasing as a result. Don’t get me wrong, there is some very good work being done in the community, but there is a desperate need for some people to go into residential rehabilitation, which is lacking at the moment. After our meetings with government and other parliamentary officials, I felt that, certainly in the short term, I wouldn’t be able to rely on the government to provide any of the help needed by people who were desperate for residential rehabilitation. I became even more determined to ensure that Amy’s Foundation would help those people who needed our assistance.

One such organization working in this field is Focus 12, whom I’d first had contact with in September 2008 when I met their chief executive, Chip Somers. The Foundation was proud to provide a donation to Focus 12 of ?30,000 towards a permanent full-time place for young people battling their addiction.

Focus 12 was important to me because just a week after Amy passed away I had a call from a friend of a friend who had little money and was desperately seeking help for her daughter. The young woman was an alcoholic, addicted to cocaine and cannabis, and suffered from an eating disorder. I called Chip and arranged for her to meet him at Bury St Edmunds the next day. She stayed at Focus 12 for six weeks and her family were very grateful. I was more than happy to pay for this myself, but Chip said that there would be no charge.

There are some truly wonderful caring people out there.

Photographic Insert

^{My mum and dad, Cynthia and Alec, in their flat in Rectory Road, Stoke Newington, 1953. Amy never met Pop Alec as he died long before she was born. She felt she knew him from my stories, though, and his style certainly played a part in her love of retro.}

^{Me aged six with my mum. Amy loved my mum as much as I did. We spent many hours listening to jazz together – a habit she later repeated with Amy.}

^{Janis and I were engaged in 1975. Who does she remind you of?}

^{A proud dad and his darling daughter. I’d probably just woken her up on coming home from work, much to Janis’s irritation.}

^{Amy was a delightful baby, always smiling and happy, but when she wasn’t we all knew about it. We took her abroad from an early age where she immediately loved the beach.}

^{Amy with her most adoring fan, my mum.}

^{Amy in Spain, aged three. Everything she wore had to be pink.}

^{Bath time for the kids was a tangle of limbs and always a soaking wet floor.}

^{Some of Amy’s drawings from school: Amy with her friends Juliette and Gemma. Why she didn’t use the correct colour for her own hair, I don’t know. I’ve always liked her schoolgirl habit of using hearts to dot her i’s.}

^{My lovely two: Alex and Amy, in their Osidge Primary school uniforms. Alex always looked after his baby sister.}

^{The precocious talent that was my daughter. Never happier than when she was performing. 1988 at our home in Osidge Lane, Southgate.}

^{Amy proud of her brother Alex at his Bar Mitzvah, 1992.}

^{Amy at Camber Sands 1988 – a rare moment when she was still long enough for me to take a picture.}

^{A thoughtful Amy, still in pink and with her heart symbol of course, at her school Summer Fete.}

^{Amy’s class photo, 1994. I know as her dad you’d expect me to say this, but she stands out so much in this picture. Perhaps because she is in the middle and gazing intently into the camera.}

^{At my mother’s house with Alex and Amy, 1995. A quiet moment just before a Friday night dinner.}

^{Amy dressed up for an early performance. Her makeup skills certainly got better.}

^{Amy on the set of the ‘Back to Black’ video, 2007. It was freezing that day and I had to rush over in between takes with a thick coat for her. This is the look that most of Amy’s fans around the world fell in love with.}

^{Amy shortly after the release of Frank, still playing a guitar as she performed on stage, 2003.}

^{Amy performing ‘Valerie’ with Mark Ronson, Brit Awards 2008.}

^{Amy in the spotlight. Performing ‘Rehab’ at the Brit Awards 2007.}

^{Amy on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, 2008.}

^{Amy collecting her second Ivor Novello Award for ‘Rehab’, 2007.}

^{Amy with Janis and me at the Ivor Novello Awards 2008, picking up her third — well, technically I picked up this one as she arrived late.}

^{Amy with all of us — Alex, Janis, Jane, me and my sister Melody — at the live TV link for the Grammy Awards, 2008.}

^{Amy at one of my shows, October 2010. This was the night she joined me on stage and stood beside me while I sang.}

^{Hand in hand with my lovely daughter, snapped by the paps leaving a hotel in Central London. I was always very proud to be seen with her, especially when she looked as lovely as this.}