The Winehouse family line up to testify

With mother taking care of GMTV, it falls to Amy Winehouse's brother Alex to tell The Times about Amy's recovery:

She’s back among us. This time we hope it’s for real
A weekend to remember ended in triumph for the singer. Now Amy Winehouse's brother hopes that his sister has conquered her demons

Alex, to be fair, doesn't pretend that she wasn't in a bad place, and you can't blame him for wanting to stay positive, but this family insistence that "well, that's all behind us now" reads less like good news, more like hostages to fortune.

Interestingly, there's a footnote to the piece which greatly reduces the importance of The Sun's crack video in persuading Winehouse to rehab, making it just another pinprick in a wrestling match with hedgehogs:

Lucian Grainge, head of Universal Music Europe, is credited with forcing Amy Winehouse into rehab by presenting her with cuttings documenting her downfall.

A source at Universal said: “Lucian got every piece of press from around the world. He then laid everything out and summoned Amy. He told her to have a good look, then tell him she hadn’t got a drugs problem. It did the trick.”

This confirms rehab was a career move rather than a decision entered into willingly; you wonder if it can really hold when it's something you're doing to please your boss rather than because you've had enough yourself.

Winehouse's brother appeals for calm

Alex Winehouse, brother of the more infamous Amy, has appeared on the radio to ask for the "media to cut her some slack":

“Through all this battering she’s getting from the press, no one seems to bear in mind that she’s a human being just like anyone and she has feelings and she’s been through a really tough couple of months.

“She really wanted to do [Birmingham] because she felt she owed it to the fans, and she did her best to get through it.

“But come one, she’s been through so much in the last few months and weeks and I guess it really got to her, I think she should be cut some slack.”

It's a curious approach: rather than suggesting to the people pumping her money-making arm that she not be constantly forced onto stage, Alex instead asks that people not point and shout when she's there. But, really, when you're suggesting that someone should be given bonus points for actually bothering to turn up and play a gig that they've already banked the ticket money for, you should probably be asking if 'media coverage' is actually the root of the problem.

Alex then goes on to reveal that, probably, it doesn't matter if the media cut her slack or not:

Asked whether the negative press upsets the troubled star, Winehouse continued: “I don’t think she really pays any attention at all."

Ah. So this is less about worrying about the human Amy Winehouse, and more about trying to protect the public perception of the Winehouse brand, then?