This is from a post on the BBC's People's History of Pop (PHOP) website ...
Amy, My Dad & I
I'm due to appear in episode 5 of this fantastic show talking about when I was lucky enough to meet Amy Winehouse.
I have been a huge Amy Winehouse fan from the first time I heard her sing ‘Take the Box’ on the radio in 2003. Her voice stopped me in my tracks & brought tears to my eyes. I went & bought the album Frank the next day.
I am an artist and I specialise in mosaic portraits & around the same time I been asked to exhibit some of my work at The Orwell pub in Angel. I created 3 Amy portraits and was commissioned to create another 2.
I was very lucky to meet Amy in the Hawley Arms pub on Wednesday 10th November 2010. My Dad was visiting from York and had been speaking at a luncheon & my brother Matt & I had arranged to meet him for a few drinks at the Hawley Arms before he got his train home later that evening. We were having some wine and chatting when suddenly the music from the juke box got much louder. Bizarrely the track playing was ‘Runaway’ by Del Shannon, which is my Dad’s all-time favourite song. He said that although he loved the record, it was so loud it was hurting his hearing aid.
Matt went round to the bar to ask if they would mind turning it down as it was only about 4pm and the pub was pretty empty. He came back with a big grin on his face and said “You’ll never guess who is putting the music on? It’s Amy Winehouse!!!” Of course, I was so excited and was plucking up the courage to go and say hello, when she came round the corner to where we were sitting and said “I’m really sorry, I’ve turned the music down as I heard it was hurting someone’s hearing aid”. We were all a bit star struck at for a few seconds and then we all got on like old friends. She was so lovely & funny & made a real fuss of us. I was saying, like her that I am very close to my dad too. She then got my Dad up and had a little dance with him. Even more bizarrely the second track she’d put on was ‘Be Bop A Lula’ by Gene Vincent, my Dad’s second favourite song!
We had a couple of photos taken and then I showed her the photos of the portraits I’d done of her. She genuinely loved them & she wanted one. I spoke to her security Neville, who gave me the contacts of her manger and record company to arrange it. When we left she had begun serving behind the bar, we went to say goodbye & she came around the bar and gave us each a hug & kiss goodbye and said she was looking forward to getting the mosaic.
Very sadly, she passed away a while after and I was, like millions of her other fans, truly devastated. I wanted the mosaic that she had chosen to be exhibited in one of her favourite places or at a music venue she’d performed at. I decided to donate it to The Hawley Arms in Camden as a tribute. It hangs proudly in the VIP room & was recently featured in a TV advert by the Greene King Brewery Company.
Story link ...
https://www.historyp...g/1/pin/1047443
