Mitch Winehouse was on ITV’s This Morning on Monday to talk about his famous daughter and combat the lies and half-truths in the tabloids, he says. - Mitch told Fern & Phillip how Amy was actually an opponent of hard drugs until she married Blake. - Amy’s widely reported overdose in August was in fact a seizure [...]
Mitch Winehouse was on ITV’s This Morning on Monday to talk about his famous daughter and combat the lies and half-truths in the tabloids, he says.
- Mitch told Fern & Phillip how Amy was actually an opponent of hard drugs until she married Blake.
- Amy’s widely reported overdose in August was in fact a seizure brought on by the use of drugs and spoke of how this is even more dangerous.
- Mitch said that her bulimia still has to be fully addressed and although she has put on some weight, she is still not cured.
- He revealed that she cannot face reading the papers and that a good friend does it for him.
- He told of how he and Amy’s mother were disappointed at not being able to attend her wedding in May.
- He revealed that he did tell her not to go to rehab, as she states in her famous song, but that he’s changed his mind now.
- He told of the measures which are in place to help Amy as soon as she requests it.
Amy’s hubby, Blake, won’t be happy to hear what Poppa Winehouse had to say!
CLICK HERE to check out the full transcript!
[Image via WENN.]
The interview began with a VT showing images of an extremely underweight Amy, paparazzi shots of Amy and husband Blake covered in cuts and Amy wearing blood soaked shoes. Fern asked Mitch how he copes with such images of his daughter.
Mitch: “Those particular shots are very difficult to cope with. But there’s a different story behind the headlines. Some of the things which have been reported in the press have been completely inaccurate and sometimes they’re lies. Clearly what you’ve just seen in those photographs are not lies but what preceded it and what went after it, well it’s stretching the truth, lets put it like that.”
Fern: “We knew she appeared to be drinking quite a lot because of her famous song ‘Rehab’ and Daddy says ‘You don’t need to go’. That’s you, did you say that?”
Mitch: “I did then but you know my opinion has changed now.”
Fern: “So she is still drinking?”
Mitch: “She’s not drinking as heavily now as she was then actually but there are other problems. The other problem is the bulimia which is still apparent, although she’s put on about a stone in weight but it’s still affecting her health and there are problems with substance abuse as well. But again not as bad as has been reported.”
Fern: “So the overdose or alleged overdose…”
Mitch interrupted her saying, “It wasn’t an overdose it was a seizure, which in fact is worse.”
Fern: “A seizure brought on by drug use?”
Mitch: “Yes.”
Fern: “When did the drug abuse start do you know?”
Mitch: “It’s apparent in her music that she’s smoked dope for quite a while, probably from the age of 16 or 17, perhaps even earlier. She was a complete opponent of hard drugs in fact she got up and said she couldn’t understand why people in the music industry took hard drugs and that changed about 6 months ago when she got married to Blake. And I’m not saying its Blake’s fault, what I’m saying is Amy’s responsible for her own actions, however it’s a fact that the hard drugs coincided with their marriage.”
Phillip: “Were you surprised at the marriage?”
Mitch: “Well I knew that they were going to get married, we weren’t completely in the dark but we were kind of hoping that Amy’s mum could have been there at least. So we were a little disappointed yeah.”
Phillip: “You see a picture of your little girl on the telly looking like that and a life that seems to be from our point of view, that she’s pressed the self destruct button in the last six months. And you think, ‘My god, where is this going to end up’. You must be thinking that now.”
Mitch: “Well we do think that. We do think, where is it going to end up and we don’t know. But you know as I’ve said before, at the moment she decides that enough is enough, all the help that she needs will be in place. Her family are there, the doctors are there, the facilities are there, should she wish to make use of them. We’re not completely helpless, things are in position.”
Phillip: “Does this help, you doing this [the interview]? Do you think that helps?
Mitch: “Well one of the reasons I agreed to do this is because as you know, our side of the family rarely speak to the press. One of the things that disturbed me on Friday was newspaper reports in the tabloids which was, when Amy had the seizure, which they call the overdose, she had to have her stomach pumped out, she had to have an adrenaline shot in the chest a la Pulp Fichtion. It’s all complete nonsense, none of that happened.”
Mitch: “I don’t read the papers myself. A friend of mine, a guy called Ginger Norman, he reads them for me. Because I can’t bring myself to read the papers ever day and he kind of vets the news for me everyday because I just can’t face it. He asked me to have a look as this particular piece which I did do. I phoned the newspaper in question, spoke to the newsdesk, I told them what had happened. They said they had no interest in what I have to say on this subject.”
Mitch: “The newspapers don’t say what a lovely person she is, what a caring girl she is, what a wonderful grandchild and child she’s been to her parents. All they will tell you is that she’s a drug addict, that she’s out of control. Of course that is partially true but it’s not the full truth. She’s not really out of control, there are controls.”
Fern: “She’s on a European tour right now, she’s just finishing it. How often do you talk to her?”
Mitch: “Well you know I try and speak to her every other day but you know every day I’m in contact with the tour. I went to Norway last week because there was a problem out there. Again it was in all the newspapers that they found Cannabis, it didn’t belong to her, it belonged to someone else on the tour. They arrested Blake, Amy and the person who was responsible. And they only released them after they signed a form, which they were told was a release form, it was in Norwegian. It was actually a confession, so this being dealt with now by the Norwegian authorities and the British Consulate because the ramifications of that is that she now can’t get into the States and she was meant to go next week.”
Finally, Fern asked after Amy’s current state of health and what the future holds for her
Mitch: “She’s ok, she’s put on over a stone. She’s eating, although the eating disorder hasn’t been fully addressed. If you look at the photographs of her in August and see her now you will see a marked change for the better. But it’s a change for the better, it isn’t a cure.”
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