Families at odds over Winehouse situation

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Amy Winehouse - famililes disagree

Amy's father-in-law, Giles Fielder-Civil, urged the singer's record company to do more to stop the couple taking drugs. He also called on fans to stop buying Winehouse's records - to send a message to the pair to sort out their problems.

But Winehouse's father, Mitch, defended the record company and said that telling fans to boycott his daughter's albums was "clutching at straws". They gave interviews on Radio 5 Live as fears continue to grow for the married couple.

Winehouse, who has cancelled a string of performances, was recently seen bloodstained and covered in scratches after quitting rehab with her husband. The Back to Black singer shocked her fans with her blood-soaked ballet shoes, bruises to her neck, bandages on her arms and make-up smeared down her face. Fielder-Civil had scratches covering his face and neck.

Brit-award winner Winehouse was admitted to hospital earlier this month after a reported overdose of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol.

Mr Fielder-Civil told the Victoria Derbyshire programme on Radio 5 Live: "Why don't the record company do more? We believe that the record company should be proactive in helping the couple get better. At the moment they seem to be hiding behind a label that the pair aren't drug addicts, they're exhausted or whatever."

He said: "The pair have gone on holiday. That isn't helping them. It's just getting them out of the way. We urge the record company to do something. There are a lot of people that surround the couple who do have a vested interest." He added: "We have tried to contact the record company again but we have received no reply."

He said: "It's about time that their friends and their professional colleagues say to them 'enough is enough'." The headmaster added: "Perhaps it's time to stop buying records. It's a possibility ... by doing that, that affects the record company and the record company may take notice." He called for Winehouse's contract to cease until she recovered or for music bosses to force the couple to enter a rehabilitation unit "where they can't leave until they sort themselves out".

After the interview, Winehouse's father rang the show to tell the "story of Amy's family" and "also the record company and the management company". He said a meeting had been arranged a day after the pair left rehab with doctors and specialists.

But he said: "Unfortunately Giles and Georgette (Blake's mother) were due to come to that meeting. They came down to London. But instead of coming to that meeting to sit with the doctors and with me and representatives of the record company, they chose to go to the pub with Amy and Blake. This is the problem we find ourselves up against. We have two families pulling in different directions. Basically we just want the same things, we want our children to be safe.
But we've got different definitions of how we can do that."

He added: "Had they also been in that meeting, some of the accusations they've made about the record company, about trying to work them to the bone and things like that, they would have heard me telling the record company that all of Amy's functions, certainly for the next three months, were cancelled on the spot. There's no question of the record company or her family trying to work her to the bone. These are some of the accusations that have been levelled at us.

"They will have seen caring, loving people from the record company, people who have been in the business for 20 or 30 years who are used to seeing matters like this, crying their eyes out because of their genuine love and affection for Amy. The record company isn't as callous as some people think it is."

He said both families were "living through hell" and it was not about the two families. But he added: "There's only one person to blame and that's Amy. That's what Blake's parents have got to understand. It's no good blaming anybody else. This is Blake's fault and Amy's fault."

Blake's mother told the programme: "I think they both need to get medical help, before one of them, if not both of them, eventually will die." Her husband added: "We are concerned that if one of them dies, the other will die. They are a very close couple, and if one dies through substance abuse, the other may commit suicide."

But Amy's father said: "We are not talking about people who are in imminent danger of death."
He said the idea of fans not buying her records was "clutching at straws. Will it do any good? No," he said.

"People are clutching at straws. There's only one way out of this, and anyone with drug experience will tell you, the only way out is not sectioning them, not locking them up; at some point they are going to reach rock bottom, and at that point they will say, I don't want to do that any more."

A spokeswoman for Island Records said it was not commenting.