One of Amy Winehouse’s best friends has opened up about the ‘guilt’ he still feels over her untimely death.
Amy passed away aged just 27 in 2011 after battling addiction and bulimia, and is the subject of a brand-new BBC documentary entitled Reclaiming Amy.
Now pal Michael Collins has taken to Lorraine to chat to temporary host Ranvir Singh about how he still feels ‘guilty’ over Amy’s passing.
“One of the reasons I haven’t really talked about it is it’s still quite hard to go through,” he explained via video link. “There’s still a lot of guilt associated with her death that just kind of comes back to you.”
He said making the documentary was “tough”, but confessed it was “great” to “go back to those old times”, including revisiting the primary school he attended alongside Amy.
(Image: ITV)
Ranvir told him: “I think it’s interesting because you’re a teacher, aren’t you, and you spend your life looking at the wellbeing of young people.
“I think you said that looking back at Amy’s life, there is nothing that was indicative of an upsetting home life or anything.
“Actually, I think this is a really important moment for the family, for people to really see what she was like from a family’s point of view.”
(Image: ITV)
The host added: “What really came through to me is how, if you have no experience with addiction in your life, that other people can be very quick to judge.
“You’ve just spoken of your guilt there, that there’s some guilt of ‘could we have done more?’ – talk to me about that, and how from the outside looking in it’s really easy for people to point the finger, but it’s just never that simple.”
Michael responded: “Amy was just always so headstrong and she would do what she wanted – she’d cut off her nose to spite her face, that was just her character.
(Image: ITV)
“There were times when I saw her lose some good friends who were challenging her over the amount of drink she was drinking, for example.
“And there were times when I wanted to say something but, maybe selfishly, I was afraid of losing her.
“I was afraid she would just cut me off,” he continued. “And then, you know, I might never speak to her again. Put yourself in those shoes – it’s harder than you think.”
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Michael went on: “But given that time, the 2000s-era, 2010s when she died – mental health didn’t have the profile it does now.
“What I’d like to think is that if we moved it on 10 years and she was 27 today, that actually we’d be a lot more open to just talking about mental health.”
Reclaiming Amy airs on Friday at 9pm on BBC Two.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
