The extraordinary beauty of Amy Winehouse

You could be forgiven for thinking that it was a much-beloved member of the royal family who died ten years ago today — Princess Diana, perhaps, whose posthumous 60th birthday we recently celebrated. (This one also has her very own statue, a bronze one in her stomping ground of Camden Town.) This Jewish princess had similar problems with bulimia, and with the paparazzi, but she was a pop star, only 27 when she died, on paper with not much mainstream appeal.

Yet many of us were — and are — obsessed with Amy Winehouse. She released only two albums in the space of three years, but her ghost still bestrides pop music like a tiny, tattooed colossus.

When we idolise an artist, it’s tempting to make their sorrows about us. How could they shine such a searing spotlight on our darkest desires and disappointments if they can’t literally read our minds? It’s a schoolgirl error, starting harmlessly with the virginal urgings of David Cassidy — and ending up in the full-on emotional maelstrom of Winehouse’s Back To Black.