I was working last week in Camden in London doing some conservation work on the Amy Winehouse statue by sculptor Scott Eaton. She’s a fabulous sculpture and in such a cool trendy place. Camden, is a place I can count as my own back yard. Born in north London, I used to go there when I was younger and as a university student in Bloomsbury, I spent a lot of my evening-time there. It was always a vibrant place but it’s been cleaned up a lot since those days – and, The Stables, which is the area Amy stands in is well worth checking out: cool shops, and really unusual aesthetics – colossal shiny robots, Hansel and Grettles Emporium, and loads more besides. Amy is a fabulous little statue and I say little because it is a life size sculpture and when you stand next to her, you realize how slender she was. She had a waist that Scarlet O’Hara would have been jealous of – needless to say I felt like a hippo standing next to her, and as I had my son assisting me on this project, he was only too quick to agree with me on this point. The statue was suffering from too much love. Incredibly that really is possible. Her adoring fans love her so much that thye can’t help themselves from touching every inch of her surface and there’s a reason why bronze statues were traditionally put on big stone plinths – it’s partly to protect them. Sweat on people’s hands can be ruinous to a bronze’s patina and sadly, Amy looked a little like she’d developed a disease because the surface had become quite disfigured.