Winehouse in good publicity shock

All publicity is good publicity, the cliché tells us. In fact the cliché jumps up and down and insists that this is so and has been known to stamp its foot if anyone disagrees, as news from St. Lucia proves.

The Caribbean island, as any celebrity-watcher should be able to tell you, is the latest haunt of choice of Amy Winehouse, who has been taking her leisure there in the form of imbibing copious amounts of alcohol, crawling around the hotel, begging for drinks from other guests of the Le Sport Spa (where she claims to have gone for her health), singing loudly from her balcony (reports do not state if crowds gathered) falling out of her bikini and going topless.

This is the sort of behaviour that has enthralled and appalled the British press for over a year, the usual Amy Winehouse rigmarole of drunken hi jinks. Not what you would call good publicity, for her, for Le Sport Spa or for St Lucia.

But St. Lucia’s government thinks otherwise; they have sent Winehouse a basket of local produce to thank her for bringing St. Lucia to international attention. According to The Hindi: “Tourism Minister Allen Chastanet said every photograph of Winehouse had shown her smiling or interacting with the locals, and claimed the overall impact of her stay had been positive.”

It’s certainly an upbeat take on the singer’s stay, although I cannot help but wonder what the basket of local produce contains; it could be bananas or it could be rum. Whichever it is, the government’s PR department knows how to make the best of a bad situation.

I’m not sure that Le Sport Spa will agree, however – they pride themselves on selling relaxing holidays that treat the guests to any number of holistic treatments and they are almost certain to disagree with anyone who claims that witnessing Amy Winehouse erupting out of her swimwear on their volcanic sand beach is going to cause mass relaxation. Except the paparazzi who followed her to the resort and whose pay-cheques rely on such behaviour; perhaps they should be sending Winehouse baskets of goodies?