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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: The crucifix row that shows Amy Winehouse has become a religious icon I have just seen an extraordinary scene outside Amy Winehouse’s house – just round the corner from my flat in Camden, north London. As I bicycled past, a woman in her late 30s, dressed in dark clothes and a trilby, started taking photographs on her phone of a dummy on a crucifix (pictured) that she had placed against the railings in Camden Square. An incensed local man, in his 70s, started shouting at her, “It’s outrageous. She was Jewish. Who else thinks this is outrageous? We must call the police.” “Are you Jewish yourself?” asked the cabbie who had brought the woman to the square. “No – but it’s still outrageous.” When the woman continued taking photographs, the elderly man grabbed the mobile from her hand and flung it over the railings into the square. The crowd – around a dozen strong – divided around 50/50, shouting their approval or disapproval of the elderly man’s behaviour. “Who’s going to pay me my £13?” said the cabbie, as the woman went into the square in search of her phone. At this moment, a man in his 60s turned up, objecting to the scene. “I’m a Russian Jew,” he said, “And I find it deeply shocking.” By now, the woman had retrieved her phone. She jumped back into the cab and left the square. Minutes after, a young man in his early 20s, with a Human League haircut – his hair combed at an extreme horizontal angle across the scalp - ripped down the crucifix and hurled it to the ground (pictured), kicking the dummy over and over again. “Those are Dolce Gabbana sunglasses,” said a tourist in the crowd, looking at the glasses that had been knocked off the dummy’s face before I turned up. It was a distressing row. The dignified crowd that turned up at the square soon after Amy Winehouse’s death has now changed. There are still some genuinely shocked figures, turning up with flowers. But there are also now some ghouls who are positively enjoying the set-up. There are also those who are using Amy Winehouse as a vehicle for their own religious or spiritual feelings. The row had little to do with the tragedy of a poor, young, brilliant singer who has just died; and more to do with the participants’ own strongly-held feelings about Judaism, Christianity, atheism or a kind of pagan reverence for a new spiritual icon. Unedifying as the whole episode was, it shows that Britain is still far from being indifferent to religion.
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