Connect with us

Published

on

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
Image:
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 refreshed perspective of Winehouse ten years after her death
Image:
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
Image:
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'
Image:
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
Image:
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
Image:
Bromfield joined fans who had laid tributes for Winehouse in July 2011
Tributes were laid near Amy Winehouse's home after her death
Image:
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.

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Bruce Willis sings and blows out candles as he celebrates 68th birthday following dementia diagnosis

Published

on

By

Bruce Willis sings and blows out candles as he celebrates 68th birthday following dementia diagnosis

Bruce Willis has celebrated his 68th birthday with a song and a cake, surrounded by his family, after it was announced he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) earlier this year.

A video shared by his ex-wife Demi Moore showed the Hollywood star singing happy birthday while surrounded by his daughters, Moore and his wife Emma Heming, before blowing out two candles on an apple pie.

Relatives of the Hollywood star said in March 2022 that he would be “stepping away” from his successful career after being diagnosed with aphasia, a condition affecting his cognitive abilities.

Moore, 60, wrote alongside the Instagram post: “Happy birthday, BW! So glad we could celebrate you today. Love you and love our family.

“Thank you to everyone for the love and warm wishes – we all feel them.”

Heming, 44, also shared an emotional post on Instagram, describing the feelings of “sadness” and “grief” she said she experienced as a caregiver to someone with dementia, adding: “I’m really feeling it today on his birthday.”

Becoming tearful as she ended the short video, she thanked fans for their support, saying: “As much as I do it for myself, I do it for you because I know how much you love my husband.”

Starring in more than 100 films over four decades, Willis has appeared in box office hits including Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys and The Sixth Sense, earning him fans worldwide.

Read more:
What is frontotemporal dementia (FTD)?

Bruce Willis’s wife asks paparazzi not to ‘yell’ at him

Hemming also shared a collection of videos and photos of Willis spending time with his family and playing with his children.

She captioned the post: “He is pure love. He is so loved. And I’ll be loving him always. Happy Birthday my sweet.

“My birthday wish for Bruce is that you continue to keep him in your prayers and highest vibrations because his sensitive Pisces soul will feel it.

“Thank you so much for loving and caring for him too.”

Willis has five daughters, sharing his three eldest – Rumer, Scout and Tallulah – with Moore whom he married in 1987, and his younger daughters Mabel and Evelyn with Hemming, who he married in 2009.

Willis and Moore separated in 2000, but remain on good terms.

Rumer marked her father’s birthday by posting the same video of everyone singing happy birthday and wrote: “Happy Birthday Daddio I love you to the moon. You are so cool.”

Scout captioned the video in her post: “Also though, today has been PROFOUNDLY JOYFULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL !!!!!! HAPPY BW’S BIRTHDAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE !!!!”

Tallulah shared a selection of photos of her father from throughout the years on her Instagram, writing: “Happy birthday to my numero uno Bruno !!

“Feeling awash with all the good energies and love headed this Willis way! I love him and he loves me – what a delight!”

FTD is a degenerative brain disorder characterized by deterioration of the frontal and/or temporal lobes, according to the Association of Frontotemporal Deterioration (AFTD).

They list symptoms including uncharacteristic personality changes, apathy, and unexplained struggles with decision-making, speaking or language comprehension are among the most common presenting symptoms.

There are currently no treatments for FTD.

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Lance Reddick: The Wire star’s wife shares statement after actor’s sudden death

Published

on

By

Lance Reddick: The Wire star's wife shares statement after actor's sudden death

Lance Reddick’s wife has paid tribute to her husband and thanked his fans after he died on Friday at the age of 60. 

Reddick, who was best known for his role in The Wire, died suddenly from “natural causes” according to a spokesperson.

He was “taken from us far too soon” his wife Stephanie Reddick said in a post on the actor’s Instagram page.

She shared four photos of her husband in the post, writing: “Thank you for all your overwhelming love, support and beautiful stories shared on these platforms over the last day.

“I see your messages and can’t begin to express how grateful I am to have them.”

Read more:
Lance Reddick: The Wire and John Wick actor dies aged 60
Andrew Lloyd Webber reveals son is critically ill in hospital

Reddick voiced Commander Zavala in the Destiny game series. After news of his death, fans of the game paid their respects by visiting The Tower, the area where his character is stationed.

Stephanie Reddick acknowledged them in her post: “To the thousands of Destiny players who played in special tribute to Lance, thank you.

“Lance loved you as much as he loved the game.”

Reddick appeared in all 60 episodes of the crime drama The Wire, which ran from from 2002 to 2008.

The show was set in Baltimore, Reddick’s hometown, and he played police lieutenant Cedric Daniels.

Co-star Wendell Pierce said Reddick’s death was “sudden, unexpected, sharp, painful grief for our artistic family” and praised him as a “man of great strength and grace” as well as being the “epitome of elegance”.

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Andrew Lloyd Webber reveals son is ‘critically ill’ with gastric cancer – ‘I am absolutely devastated’

Published

on

By

Andrew Lloyd Webber reveals son is 'critically ill' with gastric cancer - 'I am absolutely devastated'

Andrew Lloyd Webber has said he is “absolutely devastated” as he revealed his eldest son Nicholas is “critically ill” with gastric cancer.

The Oscar-winning composer will miss the opening of Bad Cinderella at New York’s Imperial Theatre due to his son – also a composer – being in hospital.

“I am absolutely devastated to say that my eldest son Nick is critically ill,” said Lord Lloyd-Webber in a statement.

“As my friends and family know, he has been fighting gastric cancer for the last 18 months and Nick is now hospitalised.

“I therefore have not been able to attend the recent previews of Bad Cinderella and as things stand, I will not be able to cheer on its wonderful cast, crew and orchestra on opening night this Thursday.

“We are all praying that Nick will turn the corner. He is bravely fighting with his indomitable humour, but at the moment my place is with him and the family.”

Nicholas Lloyd Webber, 43, is known for scoring the BBC One drama Love, Lies And Records and a theatrical and symphonic version of The Little Prince.

He also produced his father‘s Symphonic Suites at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London and was nominated for a Grammy alongside his father for a musical theatre album for Lord Lloyd-Webber’s Cinderella.

Lord Lloyd-Webber – who has three Grammys, four Tony Awards and an Academy Award – had been set to open Bad Cinderella on Thursday after it was announced last year, when he said he was “thrilled & delighted” for it.

Read more:
Jonnie Irwin celebrates 50th birthday early after terminal cancer diagnosis
Gene mutation which increases risk of breast and ovarian cancer linked to Orkney islands

What is gastric cancer?

Gastric cancer – also known as stomach cancer – is when cells form in the lining of the stomach and grow abnormally.

If the cancer is found at an early stage, there is a possibility that it can be treated.

There are many symptoms associated with stomach cancer, some of which may be hard to spot – the NHS says they include:

• Heartburn or acid reflux

• Issues with swallowing

• Feeling or being sick

• Indigestion

• Feeling full very quickly

• Loss of appetite and weight loss

• Pain at the top of the stomach

• Feeling very fatigued

• A lump at the top of the stomach

According to Bupa, around 6,600 people in the UK get stomach cancer each year.

Continue Reading

Trending