It was just a week ago that we were reading about yet another performance fiasco where Amy Winehouse slurred and pitched around the stage in a drunken, confused state. After all those pictures of her in the Caribbean last year looking so relaxed and well seemed to give hope to her fans that maybe, just maybe, this wonderfully talented young woman was finally on the straight and narrow – that she had beaten her chemical demons and was ready to start living again. Did any of us though really have the feeling she had done it…? I think we wanted to believe it – but it was not to last.

Sadly Amy Winehouse is dead at the young age of 27 – found beyond help this afternoon in her home from what appears to be a drug overdose. The devastating journey of self-destruction finally completed and what a loss she is the world of popular music. What a loss it is for her parents to lose their daughter in such a tragic, though not unpredictable way. Maybe now it is time to identify and go after those cretins who corrupted this young woman at a time when she had the world at her feet – those who sold her the drugs which reduced her little body to that of a wasted skeleton and ate away at her talent turning her into almost a caricature of her former self. They are out there, somewhere, and they must be known. I hope they pay for their part in this young woman’s tragic departure from this world.