'Exhausted' Amy cancels shows after hospital visit

* Amy Winehouse yesterday cancelled her shows this week in Scandinavia. Instead of boarding her flight to Norway to perform at two festivals, I hear that she was admitted to London's University College Hospital. The gaunt-looking singer's spokesman said last night that she is suffering from "severe exhaustion".

Her hospitalisation sets alarm bells ringing. The erratic songstress, pictured yesterday morning, is known as much for her boozy benders and last-minute show cancellations as for her two Ivor Novello awards. She has suffered from eating disorders and depression and has self-harmed in the past.

Following my phone calls, her label, Island Records, released a statement confirming: "Amy Winehouse was admitted to the hospital this morning suffering from severe exhaustion. Amy was discharged from the hospital this afternoon and has been advised to take complete rest.

"Scheduled performances in Norway and Denmark this week have been cancelled."

The organisers of next weekend's V Festival are waiting to hear whether or not she will be fit to perform.

Emphasising the nature of her peaks-and-troughs career, just hours before her admission to casualty her pursuit of the lucrative US market was boosted by three MTV Awards nominations (see page 7).

Winehouse is scheduled to begin a three-month tour of Europe in October.

* Before Eric "the Eel" Moussambani charmed Olympic audiences in 2000 with his spluttering in the Sydney swimming pool, we had Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards.

Eddie (né Michael Edwards), was Britain's first Olympic ski jumper. His 13-stone frame was more suited to his plastering career than to flying down slopes, yet he entered the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics by virtue of being the sole British applicant - and finished last.

Eddie's feat is soon to be immortalised on the big screen, with the comic actor Steve Coogan taking the lead role.

Eddie tells Pandora that he is thrilled about the project, if a little hesitant about the casting of Coogan: "I like some of his stuff but I'm concerned he might be too old. He's in his forties and I was only 24."

Eddie went bankrupt in 1992 so will be pleased to receive nominal royalties from the flick: "I do a bit of PR and TV, the odd bit of radio. Otherwise it's plastering and decorating mainly."

* The distinguished Channel 4 News correspondent Sue Turton has been clutching her reddened rear with some lack of amusement since the day, two weeks ago, when a man ran up behind her while she was filing a live television report from the Oxfordshire floods and pinched her bottom on air. She gamely continued as he ran off.

The incident is popular on the video website YouTube with more than 1.2 million hits, and I hear that Turton has had an "enthusiastic" internet fan base for several years.

"There is a long-running Yahoo group called Shag Sue Turton," explains a man who probably spends too much of his time with the curtains drawn. "She is a NILF - it's like a newsreader version of a MILF." Whatever that is.

"The consensus is that she is very mumsy, she shows a bit of calf and cleavage. Personally, I imagine her as a dominatrix whipping the likes of Krishnan Guru-Murthy," he said. No mention of her Royal Television Society award.

* The plot thickens. If you believe everything you read in the papers - and why wouldn't you? - then Gordon Brown is pushing for Paddy Ashdown to become an "international envoy" to Afghanistan, to co-ordinate attempts to halt the warzone's slide into chaos.

When the story emerged on Sunday, the former Lib Dem leader - once High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina - commented that "there needs to be a single figure [in Afghanistan] pulling all the strands together".

Paddy turns up now, though, in Bosnia's Dnevni Avaz newspaper, rejecting any such offer: "I am not looking for a new job. I don't intend to go to Afghanistan and I do not know anyone who would want that. I enjoy [sic] in my role of grandpa and gardener." So if he does get the gig, we can call him "Paddy Pants (down) On Fire".

* The past couple of months have been uncomfortable for the one-time SAS man David Davis, now shadow Home Secretary. Six weeks ago his researcher, Alivia Kratke, disappeared from his office amid some kerfuffle. As reported in this column, Kratke objected to her treatment by DD and his chief of staff Dominic Raab and decided to take them to an employment tribunal. Her lawyer began collecting evidence from the MP's staff about his behaviour.

Naturally, then, I am delighted to report that Kratke's disagreement with Davis and Raab has been settled out of court - a resolution no doubt entirely unconnected from the Daily Mail "doorstepping" Kratke's family to dig for any dirt on Davis. So as with all good fairy tales: a happy ending. Oh, except for Kratke, who is laid low with the stress of it all.

pandora@independent.co.uk

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