#tom doyle

"She was this moody, chubby, Jewish-looking teenager,” says Annabel Williams, her singing coach with the NYJO. “She seemed fairly quiet and uninterested. Amy first stood out to me when she was in the centre of all the musicians and started singing. I was just like, Woah, she’s amazing. She absolutely nailed it and I was so impressed.”

From here, Winehouse began performing back room pub sets, facing a crowd with just her voice and acoustic guitar. At the same time, she began guesting with a loose north London collective called The Bolsha Band, through which she met her long-term live keyboard-player Sam Beste.

“She said to me, ‘Do you like Thelonius Monk?’” Beste recalls. “People like Dinah Washington and Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway, she really connected with those musicians on a very deep, emotional, raw level. There was a strange awkwardness about Amy. Even in those early days when we were playing the small clubs, she wasn’t really engaging with an audience in the way that an entertainer would. She was a bit in her own world.”

Mark Ronson still marvels at the memory of watching Winehouse in the moments when she lost herself in songwriting. “The thunderbolt strikes the head, the pen scribbles furiously and that’s the song,” he says. “When she wrote, there was no editing. It came out, like, this is the truth and this is how it’s gonna stay. She never second-guessed that and that’s why those lyrics are from another place.”

by Tom Doyle / Mojo

Suddenly faced with meltingly gorgeous brown eyes, Jimmy was momentarily dumbstruck. “Sir?” “Sorry?” “Who should I say wants to see the inspector?” enquired the constable, with a soft southern burr.

The constable exited into an office, and Jimmy breathed the smallest of sighs as he watched the man go, wishing that standard-issue police jackets were just a little bit shorter.

With a greater show of reluctance than he was feeling, Jimmy got up and approached the desk once more. Constable Doyle looked up and into his eyes. Oh dear. Clearing his throat and momentarily darting his own gaze away, Jimmy took a moment to compose himself. This, however, allowed Doyle to take the conversational initiative—not the best start.

"So please, if not for your own sanity then for mine, please give her something to follow.” Jimmy paired this last plea with his puppy-doggest eyes, and it seemed to be working—Doyle was softening.

“This is my landlady’s telephone number. Much better for undercover work, I reckon. Just leave a message for Tom Doyle, and she’ll make sure I get it.” He handed the paper to Jimmy, letting their fingers and gazes touch for a beat, then two. “You need help with anything, you just ring me up, alright?” Jimmy could feel the corner of his mouth twitching upwards of its own accord. “I’ll do that, Constable.”