Cherries On Top

I always read Caitlin Moran in The Times - and this week’s column about Amy Winehouse made me snort tea over my keyboard.

Her central thesis is that Amy Winehouse has joined some notional Public Figures Cartoon Network in my head, along with Keef Richards, Hunter S. Thompson and Boris Johnson.

She writes:

Winehouse’s life doesn’t upset me any more. This is because, in my mind, every one of her days ends with the credits “©Hanna-Barbera 2008″. Crack, hospital, violence, husband in jail - you might as well try to make me worry about the misadventures of Top Cat. From what I can make out, she exists on one meal a day - Nik-Naks and Soleros, purchased from a petrol station at 5am - wears ballet slippers in winter, and lives in a bin in Camden. You see. Not real. She’s Pippi Bongstocking. Little Orphan Gram-ie.

Last week, the papers pictured Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s father, locking Winehouse in her flat. Of course, because Amy is a cartoon, she jumped out of a window and escaped in a friend’s sports car, while wearing a dress a little too small for her - just like Wile E. Coyote.

She then goes on to suggest ways in which the troubled singer could be saved. These include giving her an orphan, making her the new Doctor Who and sending her into space:

While the process was ongoing, I quite like the idea of us looking up and seeing Winehouse floating above us, like a giant stray fairground balloon - her faint mating cry of “Blaaaaaaaaaake!” softly carolling across the midsummer evenings.

Recommended.

The Times

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