being so close to my Mum …’.
‘When did you know about the wedding?’ I ask Mitch.
‘… About half an hour after it happened,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t a shock as I knew they were going to get married but I specifically asked Amy … to make sure her Mum was there. … But they chose to get married quickly and I was very upset. I told Amy I was upset.’
I comment that it was very generous of Mitch to worry so much about how Janis would feel when he’s not married to her anymore. Most men wouldn’t, they would just move forward.
‘It is not a question of generosity …’ Mitch replies to me, ‘As I explained, Janis and I, we … remain very close. And I remember the anguish that Janis had when we got married and her Mum wasn’t there and I didn’t want her to go through that again. It was horrible for her. …
‘[Amy] phoned me about an hour and half after it happened. … she was very excited. Of course I wasn’t …. I knew that I really wanted her Mum to be there. And I wanted to be there. I wanted our family to be there …But [Amy] didn’t want the same things; she felt it was sufficient for them to be on their own.’
I ask Mitch what he said to her after she announced that she and Blake were married.
‘I told her that her Mum was very upset and she said, “We will have a big party when we come home, Dad.”
‘We kind of got into that mind set that we would have a party when they got home [but] that is when the problems really started. From that date.’
Blake and Amy spent a few days in Florida after their marriage. Mitch caught up with them both again after they returned to London. He tells me that he thinks this is the point at which things quickly began to deteriorate for Amy and his own relationship with his daughter began to change.
Before Amy’s marriage to Blake Mitch was seeing his daughter three to four times a week but this now fell to about once a week. This was obviously difficult for Mitch to deal with.
Mitch said that he had to see Amy as there were certain things he had to discuss with her ‘… her business affairs. My signatures are on [her] account. I run the business on a day-to-day basis …. There are accountants and I have to discuss things with her [but] I couldn’t get to see her. She was asleep … She was wrapped up with her husband – which is fair enough.
‘I understand that when a young lady gets married she hasn’t got as much time for her Dad as she used to have.It is understandable. I [didn’t] expect to see her three or four times a week.’
On 9 August 2007, several newspapers ran the story that Amy had been rushed to a London hospital, where she had had her stomach pumped after a massive drugs overdose, something that Amy subsequently denied, but Blake Fielder-Civil confirmed in 2009, after his divorce from Amy.
Amy had, according to newspapers at that time, allegedly taken ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine (horse tranquillizers) during a London pub crawl, and washed it all down, at various points in the evening, with vodka and Jack Daniels.
When she started foaming at the mouth and fitting, Blake and a female friend (who Blake later confirmed was Juliette Ashby) took her to A&E.
Janis comments: ‘If he’[d] have been in his normal state he wouldn’t [have] … He actually had the presence of mind to turn her over on her side to stop her swallowing her tongue and on that occasion he saved her life … You can argue that his actions had brought Amy to this position, but on the one occasion he actually saved her life.
‘Ironic isn’t it?’
Amy announced that her up-and-coming US tour would be delayed.
Mitch spoke to Blake’s parents, Giles and Georgette, as they tried to work out how to help their children.
In the meantime, Amy was painfully thin as she hadn’t been eating properly, was drinking too much and had an obvious problem with drugs, even if she didn’t admit it herself. Mitch says, ‘We weren’t saying this is
‘When did you know about the wedding?’ I ask Mitch.
‘… About half an hour after it happened,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t a shock as I knew they were going to get married but I specifically asked Amy … to make sure her Mum was there. … But they chose to get married quickly and I was very upset. I told Amy I was upset.’
I comment that it was very generous of Mitch to worry so much about how Janis would feel when he’s not married to her anymore. Most men wouldn’t, they would just move forward.
‘It is not a question of generosity …’ Mitch replies to me, ‘As I explained, Janis and I, we … remain very close. And I remember the anguish that Janis had when we got married and her Mum wasn’t there and I didn’t want her to go through that again. It was horrible for her. …
‘[Amy] phoned me about an hour and half after it happened. … she was very excited. Of course I wasn’t …. I knew that I really wanted her Mum to be there. And I wanted to be there. I wanted our family to be there …But [Amy] didn’t want the same things; she felt it was sufficient for them to be on their own.’
I ask Mitch what he said to her after she announced that she and Blake were married.
‘I told her that her Mum was very upset and she said, “We will have a big party when we come home, Dad.”
‘We kind of got into that mind set that we would have a party when they got home [but] that is when the problems really started. From that date.’
Blake and Amy spent a few days in Florida after their marriage. Mitch caught up with them both again after they returned to London. He tells me that he thinks this is the point at which things quickly began to deteriorate for Amy and his own relationship with his daughter began to change.
Before Amy’s marriage to Blake Mitch was seeing his daughter three to four times a week but this now fell to about once a week. This was obviously difficult for Mitch to deal with.
Mitch said that he had to see Amy as there were certain things he had to discuss with her ‘… her business affairs. My signatures are on [her] account. I run the business on a day-to-day basis …. There are accountants and I have to discuss things with her [but] I couldn’t get to see her. She was asleep … She was wrapped up with her husband – which is fair enough.
‘I understand that when a young lady gets married she hasn’t got as much time for her Dad as she used to have.It is understandable. I [didn’t] expect to see her three or four times a week.’
On 9 August 2007, several newspapers ran the story that Amy had been rushed to a London hospital, where she had had her stomach pumped after a massive drugs overdose, something that Amy subsequently denied, but Blake Fielder-Civil confirmed in 2009, after his divorce from Amy.
Amy had, according to newspapers at that time, allegedly taken ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine (horse tranquillizers) during a London pub crawl, and washed it all down, at various points in the evening, with vodka and Jack Daniels.
When she started foaming at the mouth and fitting, Blake and a female friend (who Blake later confirmed was Juliette Ashby) took her to A&E.
Janis comments: ‘If he’[d] have been in his normal state he wouldn’t [have] … He actually had the presence of mind to turn her over on her side to stop her swallowing her tongue and on that occasion he saved her life … You can argue that his actions had brought Amy to this position, but on the one occasion he actually saved her life.
‘Ironic isn’t it?’
Amy announced that her up-and-coming US tour would be delayed.
Mitch spoke to Blake’s parents, Giles and Georgette, as they tried to work out how to help their children.
In the meantime, Amy was painfully thin as she hadn’t been eating properly, was drinking too much and had an obvious problem with drugs, even if she didn’t admit it herself. Mitch says, ‘We weren’t saying this is
Similar Books
