EXCLUSIVE: Amy Winehouse's mother suspected the singer had Tourette's and reveals her tragic final days - she cut her face, stubbed cigarettes out on her cheek, lost teeth and bones stuck out of her knees

  • Tragic Amy Winehouse had two nicknames growing up, Hurricane Amy and Nudge, i.e. pushy
  • 'Loving Amy became a relentless cycle of thinking I would lose her, then not losing her, waiting to lose her,' reveals mother in new memoir
  • Janis Winehouse says Amy loved sweets so much she tried to steal them from the synagogue on festive Shabbat days
  • Amy was cutting at age nine and by 15 she was downing Southern Comfort mixed with lemonade
  • Janis did not approve of 'no-hoper' Blake Fielder-Civil who introduced Amy to heroin and cocaine
  • Winehouse's mother says there was not a moment Amy didn't have a toxic substance in her body
  • Amy died face down in her own bed in Camden, North London, alone on July 23, 2011 
Adorable but unbearable, loud and boisterous, Grammy-winning English singer and songwriter, Amy Winehouse was nicknamed 'Hurricane Amy' as a young child.
She refused to be ignored growing up in North London in the early 1980s, earning another nickname, Nudge, a Jewish term for pushing the boundaries.  From an early age, she was accident prone and eager to swallow anything from cellophane to toads that required stomach pumping.
Telling her to stop only proved to be a green light that encouraged her to step over yet another boundary.
Refusing to be mediocre, she became invincible in her own mind, wildly sentimental and wildly ill-tempered.
Amy evolved into a one-woman soap opera with a car crash lifestyle. She had created a persona as 'an over the top gangster's moll' with an unmistakable beehive hairdo that was actually a wig, winged eyeliner and tats covering her body.
But there was no return from the rebellious lifestyle she had chosen and turned it inwards. She became a slave to the drugs that took her life in 2011 at 27.

Janis Winehouse says her daughter might have had Tourette's syndrome. Something she realized looking back through the notebooks that Amy made containing her writings, song lyrics and obsessive lists

'Loving Amy became a relentless cycle of thinking I would lose her, then not losing her, waiting to lose her,' reveals Janis Winehouse (pictured with Amy)Janis and Mitchell Winehouse (above with Amy) divorced and that's when Amy's problems at school escalated. Janis says she became more unmanageable, loud, intimidating and a bullyJanis Winehouse says her daughter might have had Tourette's syndrome. Something she realized looking back through the notebooks that Amy made containing her writings, song lyrics and obsessive lists
'Loving Amy became a relentless cycle of thinking I would lose her, then not losing her, waiting to lose her,' reveals Janis Winehouse (pictured with Amy)







Janis and Mitchell Winehouse (above with Amy) divorced and that's when Amy's problems at school escalated. Janis says she became more unmanageable, loud, intimidating and a bully
'She was a singer, a superstar, an addict and a young woman who hurtled towards an untimely death. To me, though, she is simply Amy. She was my daughter and my friend, and she will be with me forever', Janis Winehouse writes in her memoir, Loving Amy, A Mother's Story, published by Thomas Dunne, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.
Janis suffered through early stages of multiple sclerosis while Amy was growing up. She wanted to write the story of the softer and unseen side of her daughter before her memory was gone. 
Looking back through the copious notebooks that Amy made that contained her writings, song lyrics, and obsessive lists about everything, Janis writes that they 'show little sign of her being racked with the kind of mental illness she struggled with in the last few years of her life' – or what she confesses in an interview with People Magazine, Amy might have had Tourette's syndrome, involuntary control over what one says.
'Loving Amy became a relentless cycle of thinking I would lose her, then not losing her, waiting to lose her…'
Amy and her mother would hold hands until she left home at 18 and continued to call her Mummy all her life.
Janis doesn't believe the speculation that Amy wanted to die. Her little girl, who looked so much like Janis, dreamed one day she would have children.
Amy loved Michael Jackson after seeing the film Moonwalker when she was five. 'Michael Jackson is handsome. I love him,' Amy said.
She perfected an all dancing, all singing Shirley Temple routine and loved her Cabbage Patch dolls Fe and Melina as well as sweets - so much she tried to steal them from the synagogue on festive Shabbat days.