Well, the evidence is this: she didn’t show! The Bournemouth gig, and the rest of the tour, was pulled yesterday – at two hours notice. We’re led to believe that her doctor has advised complete rest, and that she can’t give it her all “without my Blake”.

She seemingly has serious issues. However, whilst I appreciate that personal problems can detrimentally affect ones work (can’t they?), I confess to feeling a little seen off, and refuse to fall in with the “Arrrhhh”-ists. I’ve just been discussing this in the lab in our wonderful, royally-opened, air-conditioned new building, which, instead of conditioning, heats, thus generating static, affecting the 5 micrometre-sectioning of a small piece of paraffin-embedded tissue, which I’ve consequently lost, and am now in another foul-experiment-wasted-mood, and not relishing starting again with Friday’s tissue collection. What do I need, apart from a holiday, to alleviate my frustration? A night out listening to a brilliant singer might have helped. Still, we can’t rely on others to make us happy, can we? We have to find that for ourselves (Amy).

Tours promote albums; but don’t expect cancellation to harm sales. As the record company continues to fleece the gullible by re-issuing the album incrementally as singles (thus diminishing its emotional impact as a powerfully cohesive body of work) the whole melodramatic spectacle is fuelling Amy’s marketability. This is the most disappointing thing… because she is so talented that we should be aware enough. But we’ve allowed ourselves to become infantilised to the point where we have to be told that she’s good, that she’s having problems, that, in order to render our own lives more interesting, we need to be judgemental (sez me!). Marketing: the means of making us need what we don’t want. Amy’s id is her own business. We don’t want the biography yet (she’s only 24; leave such lazy ghostwritten Xmas rip-offs to overpaid professional footballers), even though the signs are that the posthumous one could be along sooner rather than later.

“What kind of ######y is this?”