In the mid-Noughties the film producer Alison Owen attended a music industry function with her daughter, Lily Allen. Allen was then in her early twenties and a freshly minted pop star. Also present was another new talent: Owen recalls watching Amy Winehouse taking to the dancefloor with her partner, Blake Fielder-Civil.“Amy was as thin as a pencil,” she says. “And she and Blake were in the middle of this room dancing in a full-on sexual way. Both were clearly ‘using’ and I remember thinking, ‘This is an accident waiting to happen. This is going to be a disaster.’ ”
Owen was proved right. Winehouse’s relationship with Fielder-Civil ended and she died of acute alcohol poisoning in 2011. This outcome was doubly troubling for Owen because,
