KEY POINTS:
It should have been one of the finest weeks in an already extraordinary career.
Favourite to scoop an unprecedented second Mercury award with a critically acclaimed album riding high in the charts, it might have been hoped that newly-married Amy Winehouse was basking in the glory of her
richly-deserved success - both personal and professional.
Yet appearing on stage before a sell out crowd at The Eden Project this week, she cut a tragic and forlorn figure.
True, many of the 6,000 faithful who had gathered in the chilly Cornwall night were just glad she had turned up.
Fears of a no show were running high after the singer cancelled a string of high-profile performances in recent weeks leaving thousands of fans bitterly disappointed.
Yet few could have been prepared for what happened next.
After a competent start, her performance went rapidly downhill.
At times she appeared on the brink of tears, hitting herself in the face with her microphone as the lyrics to her songs seemed to slip her mind.
"F**k it, f**k it, f**k it" she screamed at the audience before turning tail and quitting the stage leaving her band to keep what remained of the show together.
The explanation, according to her management, was that Winehouse was merely "ring rusty" after not having played for the two weeks since she unexpectedly dropped out of the T in the Park festival in Glasgow.
A source at her record company Island explained yesterday that she had been under doctors' orders to take a break after becoming exhausted by the tough touring schedule to promote her new album Back to Black.
But being spotted drinking in a Camden pub when she should have been on stage in Liverpool, did little to ease the fears that have left many asking whether Winehouse is coping with the fame her considerable talent has earned her.
Others were even wondering whether her live career was finished.
She is due to perform this summer at dozens of sold out concerts and festivals in Britain, Europe and North America.
At 23, her dissolute lifestyle and uniquely striking appearance - the back-combed beehive and sailor's tattoos - have made the girl from Southgate a ubiquitous figure in the showbiz columns of the popular newspapers.
A history of manic depression, self-harm, heavy drinking and eating disorders have only re-inforced the perception of the tragic chanteuse - an altogether darker image, some say carefully cultivated, since the release of her second album.
According to industry observers she has now supplanted that other great modern day rake and last minute no-show merchant Pete Doherty in the affections of the paparazzi photographers and their editors.
But it could have serious implications for her career, warned Paul Stokes of NME.
"She is in danger of getting in to that territory which Pete Doherty was in where people are more inclined to believe the gig won't take place when it will - even though Pete played a lot more gigs than he actually missed," he said.
Similarities between the two stars have not been lost on the wider world - both model for the same clothing label.
And as with Doherty, whose drug problems nearly destroyed his career, Winehouse has also struggled to cope with her addictions.
Yet she has also put the experience to good artistic use, not least with the single Rehab in which she describes her refusal to seek treatment for drinking.
But her problems with alcohol are legend.
There have been drunken appearances on The Charlotte Church Show and an hysterical performance on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, though these earned her as many fans as detractors.
But her alleged behaviour has not always been so amusing.
There were reports of an assault on a fan after a concert and another on a guest at her album launch party.
"I have a really good time some nights, but then I push it over the edge and ruin my boyfriend's night. I'm an ugly drunk, I really am," she said recently.
Her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil has also provided plenty of gossip fodder.
Having admitted she would beat him up while drunk, the pair were eventually reconciled after spending a turbulent year apart, marrying in a low key ceremony in Miami, Florida in May this year.
Concerns over Winehouse's mental state surfaced again shortly before the wedding when she was photographed at a resort in Miami Beach sporting what appeared to be a zig-zagging mass of scars on her right arm.
She admitted self-harming in an interview with Q magazine: "It's a funny thing, a morbid curiosity. What does that feel like? 'Ow, that f**king hurts.' It's probably the worst thing I've done."
During another interview with the US magazine Spin she carved the words 'I love Blake' into her stomach.
But many hope that beneath the increasingly troubled public mage of the jazz diva a more confident and robust private character lurks.
"I don't think we are at the crisis stage yet," said Paul Stokes.
"And the good thing for Amy is that she has got plenty of time on her side."
- INDEPENDENT
