Half-wit communications strikes again!

If you aren't British you may not be familiar with the name Amy Winehouse, but she has similar problems to Britney Spears - too much too soon - but maybe hers are even more serious.

She can't dance like Britney, but on the other hand she has shown an astounding ability to consume vast amounts of drugs. She looks like one of the Ronettes - beehive hairdo, slutty face (but unfortunately no figure), too much make-up, doesn't seem to wash too much - just one of an endless parade of white singers who have done well because they sound as though they might be black and as a result make more money than they should. Janis Joplin was her prototype, I imagine.

Anyhow, enough of the music criticism. She lives with a guy who says he is called Blake Fielder-Civil - though I wonder, seriously, is that a real name? I suspect he's really called Bert Sidebottom; but anyhow he also consumes vast amounts of drugs, presumably on her money as he has no talent we have heard of.

This morning my day was lightened when I read a piece in the London morning freesheet, the Metro , describing the latest loony antics of this prize pair of twits. In it the radiant Amy - talking about what the writer, with ineffable gift for cliche, called her "drug abuse shame" - revealed she thought she was going to die last August when she was raced to a London hospital following a reported binges on ecstasy and cocaine.

Then - and this is what made my day - someone at Metro with a sense of the ludicrous dropped in one of these quizzes for morons: "Do you think Amy is good role model? Tell us on metro.co.uk."

I believe on Monday they're thinking of running a similar piece on Adolf Hitler.

By the way, now that I've got you in the mood for the bizarre, the picture at the top is of me dressed as Dumbledore for a seminar I was doing yesterday in Durham for The Pru. Unlike Amy, I have NO shame.