Amy Director Feels Tragic Singer Is Always Close By

Winehouse's father Mitch and her ex-boyfriend Reg Traviss have been scathing about Kapadia's documentary, Amy, but he insists he was the right person to make the film because he has a spiritual link to the Brit, who died in 2011, aged 27.

He tells WENN, "I was interested in making the film because Amy felt like the girl next door. While I was making the film, I find out that I weirdly enough I went to the same school as her parents. They lived down the road from where I live. Friends of mine went out with Amy but they never spoke about it because of who she became; it was almost embarrassing to them to talk about it.

"Where I live now, the school right at the tip of my house is where her pianist went to and where she learned to play piano. I thought, 'This is a really close connection'. Everyone who worked on the film in London was not that far away from Amy. She somehow connects everyone.

"I just got off the phone with a journalist and a busker was playing Valerie in the background. This happens all the time, wherever I go in the world - her song comes on and it throws you a bit... In a weird way I feel like she was always around. I never met her but she's been there and she keeps turning up again and again when you least expect it.

"I walked out of a screening in L.A. a couple of days ago near the Grammy museum and, as I walked out, I was talking to someone and I look on the ground and there's a star for Amy! And we were just coincidentally talking about her. This happens constantly."