"It's always darkest just before they turn on the light." So said, um, someone, in some movie that I can't quite be bothered to look up at the moment. Anyway, I always thought it was a load of nonsense - I mean, darkness is consistent, isn't it? What the hell? But it turns out such cynicism is misplaced because, thanks to the combined efforts of Amy Winehouse and Andrew Lloyd Webber, I have been shown the error of my ways.
Life hasn't been too good for the House of Wine recently. Husband in prison, booed off stage, that hair looking like it is literally about to walk off her head on its own undoubtedly rodent-like legs in a desperate search for some cleansing gels. But hey! It's not all bad! Just as things were looking pretty damn dire Andrew Lloyd Webber has stepped up to the plate to defend her in the Sun today.
In that classic, inimitable style that prompted him to think that what the world really needed was a pop musical about the wife of an Argentinian despot, the clichés are rolled on out: Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf - oh, Lloyd Webber can name 'em all! "I have had, in my career, as recently as this summer, people who have been in as bad a mess as she is in," he pontificates, which might explain Sarah Brightman's growing resemblance to a chipmunk under his care, to say nothing of the physical decline of Michael Ball. Anyway, Lloyd Webber and his concert companion of the evening, "Sir David Frost", both thought she was great, but then, as Lloyd Webber concedes, David "has seen it all", so less hardy souls might not have been able to appreciate Winehouse's onstage mumblings and slurrings in quite the same way.
Lloyd Webber has a final piece of advice for our Amy: "She should try a musical." Another Suitcase, Another Hall, would work, I'm thinking, to say nothing of the chorus, "Starlight Express, Starlight Express / Are you real, yes or no? / Starlight Express / Answer me yes / I don't want you to go", a haiku that has certainly provided LiS with solace in times of need. As a final kicker Lloyd Webber throws this one into the pot: "The thing that struck me most was the audience was very straight down the line - it was more my sort of audience than a rock audience." One can't help but wonder if such a comment is not the very sort of thing that would have made Mother Theresa want to stick that needle straight into her jugular but, hey, it is not for us to fathom the modus operandi of a modern day genius.
