‘She was full of life’: The night Amy Winehouse appeared on stage for the last time
Three days before Amy Winehouse’s death from alcohol poisoning in July 2011, her goddaughter Dionne Bromfield, a 15-year-old singer, finished school for the summer and rushed to the Camden Roundhouse to perform.
It was her biggest gig yet, her friends were coming to watch and she was full of excitement. For a young singer dreaming of a career in music, just like her “Aunty Amy”, it was a big day.
Amy Winehouse turned up unexpectedly to support her, their moments together onstage captured by someone in the crowd, filming on a mobile phone.
This would be the superstar’s last public performance.
As I watched the grainy mobile phone footage later, for me this was the stand-out moment of all the news coverage around Winehouse’s death – she’s so evidently falling apart but trying so desperately to be there for her goddaughter.
Dionne Bromfield has shared her story from that night in On Stage With Amy Winehouse, the latest episode of StoryCast ’21 – a Sky News podcast series telling 21 stories from the year 2000 to 2021.
Listen below.
Subscribe to Storycast 21 now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Spreaker
It was 10 years ago, 23 July 2011, when I got the call from a music PR.
It was a sunny day but I was sitting in a windowless newsroom, working a 12-hour shift, and the world was also reacting to the tragedy of the horrific terror attack in Norway the previous day. It was a call I won’t forget.
Winehouse had been found in bed at home by a bodyguard with two empty vodka bottles by her side, bringing to a tragic end her very public struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. She was just 27.
Breaking the news and witnessing the outpouring of grief that followed felt unprecedented at the time, I remember a little girl with beehive hair laying flowers outside her house in Camden Square, alongside crowds in tears, Winehouse’s dad Mitch, and tributes from Mark Ronson and Kelly Osbourne; visibly stunned.
Bromfield performs with Winehouse during the tragic singer’s last public appearance
Covering celebrity deaths is part of the job as an entertainment journalist, but this was no ordinary pop star; when Winehouse died, everyone had an opinion.
People were devastated, her fragility so profound, and tears turned to anger and blame; tragedies such as this can often turn toxic as grief mixed with the spotlight takes its toll.
We wanted to find out about the real Amy Winehouse.
We spoke to people who knew her, Joe Mott, Kim Dawson, Piers Hernu, her teacher Sylvia Young, former record label bosses, her biographer Chas Newkey-Burden, and countless critics such as Paul Gambaccini.
But I didn’t call the one young woman who knew the singer like no one else. The Amy behind the icon. Behind the headlines. Behind the instantly recognisable beehive, eyeliner and tattoos. The “Aunty Amy”.
Bromfield has offered a fresh perspective of Winehouse 10 years after her death
Dionne Bromfield, now 25, was Amy’s goddaughter and musical protégé. The one who “Amy always put her best self forward to”.
“I kind of looked at her as a mother and a big sister… Aunty Amy, I mean, she loved it when I called her that.”
When Winehouse set up her own record label Lioness, Bromfield was her first signing. She helped her launch her first album, even joining her on Strictly Come Dancing as a backing singer to support her launch.
“She just had a really, really close bond with me from a young age. My mum noticed that, and Amy really wanted to kind of take me under her wing musically and just on a personal level,” she tells me during Onstage With Amy Winehouse.
“Amy was, like, made to be an amazing mum and an amazing wife. That was like her thing and her purpose for life… She loved to cook. She cooked meatballs all the time,” Dionne laughs. “They weren’t the best…
“She was a really simple girl. And it’s just everything around her was amplified and massive and big. So, yeah, the Amy I know is a loving, caring, funny and an extremely talented person. All the other stuff is just noise.”
At the time of Winehouse’s death, it didn’t feel right to approach a 15-year-old to pay tribute. But it seems a decade on, Bromfield is ready to talk about her Aunty Amy. I meet her at the Jazz After Dark club in Soho, a favourite bolthole of Winehouse and now something of a shrine to her, the walls covered in her portraits.
Bromfield notices one painting of the icon, in which she is wearing a pair of earrings she lent her during a shopping trip.
“She was like ‘oh, I don’t have any earrings and I really like your earrings. Can I wear yours… please?’ I never saw them again. God knows where they are now.”
Walking into the dark club from the bright sunshine, Bromfield is incandescent. Like many young women in the music industry now, she seems switched on but refreshingly transparent. In many ways the antithesis of the Amy Winehouse as painted by the paparazzi, but simultaneously somehow strikingly similar.
Winehouse was like a mother, sister and friend to Bromfield
Cast your mind back to the Amy Winehouse who burst on to the scene in 2003, the one I remember first seeing in her music video for Stronger Than Me: fantastically unpolished, sassy and mischievous. The similarities with her goddaughter are obvious.
Bromfield says she remembers the last time she saw her godmother, the time they shared together on stage, “so vividly”.
“She came out for Mama Said, which was one of her favourite songs of mine, and she had a little dance, a little bit of backing vocals and then walked off.”
Bromfield would call the iconic singer ‘Aunty Amy’
Bromfield says it has taken a long time to process Winehouse’s death. She was performing at a festival in Wales a few days later when the news broke.
“I remember going, okay, and carried on doing what I was doing, it didn’t really make sense in my head. It didn’t register. And I just kept on getting dressed to go and do my gig. It was more like, I literally saw her three days earlier and she was so positive she was glowing and everything. How are we going from this, to this?”
Winehouse had released her first album, Frank, in 2003. In 2005, she met Blake Fielder-Civil, whom she married in 2007. It was a marriage, she would later admit, based on taking drugs.
Amy Winehouse passed away on 23 July 2011
Yet in 2006 she released her critically acclaimed second album Back To Black, which would go on to become one of the UK’s biggest selling albums ever. It was the heartbreak of the record, many of the songs about Fielder-Civil, which resonated.
Her multiple Grammy award wins broke records and brought huge international success.
The contrast between her sultry and striking talent as a singing sensation and the depths of her darkness is perhaps what has come to define her legacy.
Bromfield joined fans who had laid tributes for Winehouse in July 2011
Tributes were laid near Amy Winehouse’s home after her death
At the time I remember people described a sense of inevitability about the death of Winehouse. In interviews, her father Mitch had said he had feared the worst might happen.
But Bromfield says there was nothing inevitable about it.
“To me, it didn’t feel like something that was on the cards,” she says. “She was really full of life that night. So, yeah, it was not a person who had given up on life.”
The fact she hadn’t given up, and still had so much more to give, is perhaps why Amy Winehouse will continue to be remembered.
And for Bromfield, her godmother, her musical mentor and “Aunty Amy”, will always be a part of her future, as well as her past.
You can listen to On Stage With Amy Winehouse and the rest of StoryCast ’21 by clicking here.
RuPaul has said his “heart is broken” following the death of former Drag Race winner, The Vivienne.
The drag queen and TV presenter said on Instagram on Monday he joined the entire Drag Race universe in mourning the loss of The Vivienne, whom he called “an incredibly talented queen and a lovely human being”.
The Vivienne, whose real name was James Lee Williams, won the first series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK in 2019.
Read more: The Vivienne’s rise as a drag ‘trailblazer’
The 32-year-old’s death was confirmed by their publicist Simon Jones on Sunday evening.
Danny Beard, who won the reality show in 2022, called The Vivienne “a proper entertainer” and “one of the most passionate, talented, geeky, girls I’ve ever known” and their death meant “there’s a piece missing now”.
Cheddar Gorgeous, that year’s runner-up, said on Instagram they had lost “a peer, a friend and an icon”, adding that “the entire world of entertainment grieves” and it was “impossible to make sense of such sadness”.
RuPaul joined the entire Drag Race universe in mourning the loss of The Vivienne
Bagachipz said on social media they would “talk to you before I go onstage for every single show I do”, calling The Vivienne a “powerhouse when you hit that stage”.
The Vivienne’s ex-husband, David Ludford, said the performer “made me feel love and shown me what it was really like to love someone”.
The Vivienne at the UK premiere of Wicked in November. Pic: AP
The Vivienne, 32, rose to prominence in 2015 after becoming the UK Drag Ambassador for the American series of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
The show sees drag queens competing in front of a panel of judges to become the next drag superstar.
The Vivienne, whose drag name came from their love of designer Vivienne Westwood, later competed in the first UK series of the show in 2019, going on to win it after lip-syncing in the final to the Wham! hit I’m Your Man.
Williams, who was born in Wales, also came third on the 2023 series of Dancing On Ice.
Read more:
Golden Globes winners revealed
Meghan’s cooking show secrets revealed
A spokesman for Cheshire Police said officers were called to a house in Chorlton-by-Backford, near Chester, at 12.22pm on Sunday following reports of a sudden death.
The force said there were “no suspicious circumstances”.
Entertainment
Golden Globes 2025: Emilia Perez, The Brutalist, Wicked, Baby Reindeer and Shogun among the night’s big winners
Emilia Perez and The Brutalist were the big film winners at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, with Shogun and Baby Reindeer leading the field for TV.
Emilia Perez, an operatic musical which tells the story of a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, was named best comedy or musical, best non-English language film and also won best song, while star Zoe Saldana picked up the award for best supporting actress.
Accepting the film’s top award, trans actress Karla Sofia Gascon, 52, told the audience: “The light always wins over darkness. You can maybe put us in jail. You can beat us up. But you never can take away our soul or existence or identity… I am who I am. Not who you want.”
Postwar epic The Brutalist won the awards for best drama, best actor for star Adrien Brody – who plays a Hungarian architect attempting to build a life in the US after the Second World War in the film – and best director for Brady Corbet.
The Brutalist actor Adrien Brody, winner of the award for best male actor in a drama, with his co-stars Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce. Pic: AP
Kieran Culkin was among the acting winners for his performance in A Real Pain. Pic: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni
There were also acting wins for Demi Moore (The Substance), Sebastian Stan (A Different Man), Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) and Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain).
Moore, 62, gave an emotional speech as she collected her statuette, saying it was the first award of her 45-year acting career and that she was “in shock” to beat the likes of Wicked star Cynthia Erivo and Challengers actress Zendaya.
Demi Moore picked up the Golden Globe for best performance by a female actor in a motion picture – musical or comedy – for The Substance. Pic: AP
Wicked stars and filmmakers (L-R): Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Marc Platt, and Jon M Chu. Pic: AP
“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress,” she said, adding that it made her feel that while she could make box office hits, she would never be “acknowledged”. When she came across the script for The Substance, however, she said it felt like the universe telling her, “you’re not done”.
The Wizard Of Oz prequel blockbuster Wicked, the most talked about film of the year, missed out on acting awards for its stars Erivo and Ariana Grande, but took home the cinematic and box office achievement prize.
In his speech, director Jon M Chu said: “In a time where pessimism and cynicism rule the planet, that we can still make art that is a radical act of optimism that is empowerment and that is joy… this means so much to all of us.”
Baby Reindeer and the other TV wins
Hiroyuki Sanada scooped one of three acting awards for Shogun. Pic: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
In the TV categories, Japenese historical drama Shogun dominated, picking up three acting awards for its stars Hiroyuki Sanada, Anna Sawai and Tadanobu Asano, and also the prize for best drama.
Baby Reindeer also had a successful night, with a supporting gong for actress Jessica Gunning, and the award for best limited series.
The series, about a comedian and barman who is stalked by an older woman, was a huge hit and criticially acclaimed, but has more recently made headlines for facing a lawsuit from a woman who says the show identified her as the “real” Martha, the character played by Gunning.
Baby Reindeer was named best limited TV series. Pic: Reuters
Accepting the award, creator and star Richard Gadd told the audience that people often ask him why such a dark show has been so successful.
“I think in a lot of ways, people were kind of crying out for something that… spoke to the kind of painful inconsistencies of being human,” the 35-year-old said. I think for a while now, there’s been this kind of belief in television that stories that are too dark and complicated won’t sell and no one will watch them.
“So I hope that Baby Reindeer has done away with that theory. Because I think right now, when the world’s in the state that it’s in, and people are really struggling, we need stories that speak to the complicated and difficult nature of our times.”
Read more:
The red carpet in pictures
The full list of winners
Colin Farrell was recognised for his performance in The Penguin. Pic: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni
Gadd missed out on the acting award in the show’s category – which was won by Irish star Colin Farrell, 48, for his portrayal of Batman villain Penguin in the series of the same name.
Farrell, who wore heavy prosthetics as he campaigned to be the new kingpin of Gotham in the show, joked on stage that he had “no one to thank” and that he “did it all by myself”.
The ceremony in Los Angeles was hosted by comedian Nikki Glaser, who made jokes about everything from Ozempic, the drug being used for weight loss by Hollywood stars, to Sean “Diddy” Combs – who has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking and racketeering and is currently in jail awaiting trial after being arrested last year.
“Welcome to the 82nd Golden Globes, Ozempic’s biggest night,” Glaser said as she opened the ceremony.
She also referenced the huge A-list support for Kamala Harris in the election – and how it didn’t translate to a win.
“You could really do anything… except tell the country who to vote for,” she said.
Ahead of the evented, authorities said they had implemented “increased security measures” following the vehicle attack in New Orleans and Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion on New Year’s Day.
A heavy police presence surrounded the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, with a wider and more enforced perimeter than usual around the hotel.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports9 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway