The many troubles of Amy Winehouse

This latest incident is a continuation of the multiple Grammy award winning soul diva’s brushes with the law and her troubles off stage. It follows her acquittal last July for assaulting a fan who had asked to take her picture after a charity ball. For her many Nigerian fans, Winehouse is not the ideal role […]

This latest incident is a continuation of the multiple Grammy award winning soul diva’s brushes with the law and her troubles off stage. It follows her acquittal last July for assaulting a fan who had asked to take her picture after a charity ball.

For her many Nigerian fans, Winehouse is not the ideal role model as she has been struggling with drug problems, a troubled marriage which she admitted was “based on doing drugs” and eventually collapsed as well as a retinue of court appearances for assaults and disorderly behaviour.

At her recent court appearance, the Judge discharged Winehouse on condition she pays damages of 185 pounds to her victim and avoid disorderly behaviour in the next two years, failure of which will result in severe sanctions, the judge, Peter Crabtree said.

Winehouse, 26, shot to limelight with her 2006 album Back to Black which immediately topped UK charts and was named album of the year in 2007 and led her to five Grammy awards in 2008.

Her talent and success on stage have been eclipsed by her troubles off it. She married Blake Fielder-Civil, a British video production assistant, in May 2007 and barely a month later, the couple got into a bloody drug-related fist fight, inflicting facial injuries on each other. Pictures of their bloodied faces caused disgust among many fans. By October that year, the couple was arrested in Norway for possession of crack cocaine.

The singer was later fingered in attempts by her husband to pervert the cause of justice and assault. She gave her husband money to pay off a witness in an assault charge brought against him and was severely reprimanded by the judge. Her husband was later jailed having been found guilty. The couple later split July 2009 after he accused her of infidelity; an accusation she never denied.

But her marriage has not been her only problem. Winehouse, the tattoo spotting celebrity, has a serious drinking problem and a drug habit almost as famous as herself. She also has health issues caused by her excessive smoking and substance abuse, her father had said. She had been hospitalised in August 2007 for overdose of heroine, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, and alcohol.

Repeated attempts to cure her have been unsuccessful. Judge Crabtree had said in her latest court appearance that alcohol had played a major part in her assault on the theatre manager.

Since her divorce from Blake, Winehouse has kept a low profile until her latest run-in with the law. She had even relocated to the Milton Keynes area of London for a fresh start. But local police superintendent, Simon Eatwell, says her eccentrics would not be tolerated. “We will not tolerate incidents of public disorder and will always deal with them robustly,” he said.