The pair first met on London's gigging scene, through mutual friends.Russell Brand said: "When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they've had enough, that they're ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it's too late, she's gone."
Speaking about their first encounter Brand said: "When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends."
At the time, Russell Brand was barely out of rehab and failed to notice that they both shared an affliction, "the disease of addiction".
On hearing her sultry voice for the first time at a Paul Weller gig Brand said: "I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal."
"My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I'd only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound."
Brand finished up his post with a plea to addicts suffering the same as Amy was.
He said: "Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease."
"Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there."
