Gordon in the morning: Slip them into different sleeves

So the inevitable posthumous Amy Winehouse album bandwagon starts; Mitch and family inviting Gordon to private listen of the unreleased work:

The ex-cabbie could not hide his pride as he listened to the 12 songs, some of which even he had never previously heard.

I joined the family in a West London studio last week for the first listen to the surprise collection.

Not all the family, actually:

Amy's 56-year-old mum Janis listened separately to the collection of unheard material because the emotion of the occasion was too personal to share with others.

Especially the showbiz editor of a tabloid who gleefully recounted and chivvied and exposed and prodded their daughter when she was alive, you might assume.

What the "trove" turns out to be is a collection of covers, recorded across the last ten years or so, along with a few works-in-progress versions of familiar songs and one or two new tracks that sound as if they might be best left to the family:

Between The Cheats, was recorded as the star emerged from her turbulent marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil.

But it gets even more uncomfortable than that:

The most emotional track for the singer's family and fans is her cover of A Song For You, a Leon Russell tune made famous by Amy's favourite artist Donny Hathaway. The song, on which Amy plays guitar, was recorded in a single take at her London home in 2009 as she battled to overcome her addiction to Class A drugs.

Her voice can be heard quaking as she tearfully delivers the lyrics.

The really good news, though, is that this mix of the too personal and the previously discarded is going to be ready for release on December 5th - just in time for the Christmas market.

But it's not totally a cynical cash-in:

The posthumous album will be released on December 5 and £1 from every sale will go to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which is helping children's charities.

As much as a whole pound? That'll really stop it looking like a record rushed out to maximise the cash take, then.