Believe what you read and you'll think that Amy Winehouse's lungs are nothing more than gunk-filled peanut-sized husks that barely work at all.
But that's all nonsense – even though her father Mitch spent the weekend telling anyone who'll listen that Amy Winehouse has been struck down with emphysema, it actually turns out that Amy hasn't so much got emphysema as might get it one day in the future if she doesn't stop smoking – something that could probably be said for all smokers everywhere.
Curses! Now our Amy Winehouse Disease Bingo card is all messed up. Quickly, we'll need a bucket of monkeypox and a dirt-resistant syringe. Stat!
We know it's half a year away, but we're going to save up and get Mitch Winehouse some celebrity parenting lessons for Christmas. Lord knows he needs the help.
Take Dina Lohan or Joe Simpson – they know that the way to get your daughter to the top of the pile is to mercilessly promote them to within an inch of their lives, to blame the media for every single one of their failings and to occasionally tell the world how delicious their boobies look. Mitch Winehouse does the exact opposite of this.
You see, whenever some weird new fate befalls Amy Winehouse, it's always Mitch who winds up blabbing to the press first. And not with standard-issue denials, either – Mitch somehow usually manages to sneak in a reference or two about how utterly effed Amy is. For example, not so long ago Mitch wanted Amy Winehouse to go to a mental hospital – which is obviously either a giant overreaction or something any parent would do upon learning that their child had deliberately befriended Pete Doherty.
And then there's the emphysema. Yesterday everyone was all 'oh no, Amy Winehouse has got emphysema ' thanks to a frantic, dry-mouthed interview about oxygen masks and 70% lung capacity that Mitch Winehouse gave to the Sunday Mirror this weekend. Now, however, it's a completely different story.
Turns out that Amy Winehouse doesn't have emphysema after all – she's got the easily-reversible first traces of something that could potentially lead to something like emphysema. The sniffles, basically. E! Online has more:
The singer's rep is saying that the 24-year-old Brit does not have emphysema, as her father told Britain's Sunday Mirror over the weekend. Rather, she has "early signs of what could lead to emphysema," rep Tracey Miller said Monday. "Amy really hasn't got emphysema" … Mitch told BBC Radio 1 today.
Thank heavens for that – for all of Amy Winehouse's tabloid notoriety, it'd be tragic to think that one of this country's brightest musical talents could no longer perform because she suffered from a degenerative lung disease. Not being able to perform because she's constantly spazzed off her chump on weapons-grade narcotics is fine, but not lung disease. Heavens, no.