To say that Amy Winehouse has a bit of a reputation is rather like suggesting that the sky is blue or that the Pope has Catholic tendencies. With her big hair and bigger attitude, she’s been providing fodder for the tabloid gossip columns since her spectacular comeback with the Brit award-winning Back to Black last October. The 23-year-old North Londoner has been spotted staggering drunk around every pub in Camden, sporting wounds she can’t remember incurring after having fallen down, and frequently adding to the large number of tattoos already covering her chest (even her otherwise proud dad admits that he’s not a fan of her body art), not to mention stocking up at her local Threshers at 9am.

There is even a story doing the rounds about the time that she sat in the Hawley Arms, her favourite Camden boozer, hurling chips.

I caught up with her on her way to said pub – but not for a drinking session. “I’m going to my local to do a video shoot. That’ll be weird,” she says, giggling – and clearly still struggling to accept that she is a star. The daughter of a London cabbie is no diva, although she does get to live the high life occasionally. It is 2pm and she has just got up, having spent last night in a hotel with her boyfriend after a swanky dinner to celebrate his 25th birthday.

“We went to such a nice restaurant and just felt really out of place,” she says. “It was in Mayfair, and it’s nice to dress up and do something you don’t usually do – but the place was full of politicians."

Perhaps she could have advised them on policy reform, although reforming is not something she’s keen on doing. As her hit song Rehab says, they tried to make her go to rehab and she said “No, no, no”. It’s just one of the clutch of ball-breaking blues numbers on Back to Black that got her the Brit award for Best Album and has helped her to crack the US charts, entering at No 7, the highest debut position for a British solo female. Life has not changed much, she insists. “I’ve just had the opportunity to do a lot more things. It’s exciting, yeah,” one of those opportunities being festival-headlining dates this summer, something she's really chuffed about.

Any tips for fans heading into the mud? She says to eat pie and mash, and that women need to wear shorts, not skirts, “because ladies do tend to fall over. “I’m not really a festival goer” admits the girl headlining every major event this summer, ‘but I like them because everyone’s there to have a good time. You know the people who go to a gig and get pissed off? It’s not like that – people at festivals have no expectations.”

She knows all about dashing expectations, having recently cancelled a swath of shows – citing everything from exhaustion to having fallen over and broken her front teeth. In the case of the latter, when the artist she was meant to be performing with the next day in Norway bumped into her in a London pub and said “Sorry about your accident”, she looked nonplussed and said: “Oslo? I’m not going to f***ing Oslo.”

She assures us that she will make it to the festivals, though. “I just want to sing my songs,” she says, rather sweetly. We can only hope...

For all of Amy’s festival dates visit www.amywinehouse.co.uk

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