'Amy would have hated this movie': KATIE HIND reveals why Amy Winehouse's friends are boycotting the new biopic of her life - and what really happened to the husband who introduced her to heroin

Blake Fielder-Civil's life today couldn't be in starker contrast to the one he enjoyed in the mid-2000s.

Then, as the paramour of singer Amy Winehouse, he shared her £1 million Camden flat and an infamously hedonistic lifestyle in the capital.

A former drug addict, Blake, after all, has admitted being the one who introduced the star to heroin and is widely blamed for triggering her descent into the drug and alcohol abuse that eventually saw her succumb to alcohol poisoning in 2011, aged 27.

These days, the father of two lives hundreds of miles from London in a quiet suburb of Leeds, in a modest three-bedroom semi bought by his fiancee Bay Wright for £217,000 in 2019.

Now aged 42, he says he has been clean for years, but he can sometimes be spotted swigging from a beer can as he makes his way to meet friends at a nearby social club.

As neighbours have observed: 'We know who he is. Things must be very different for him now.'

Amy Winehouse with husband Blake-Fielder Civil before her untimely death aged 27 in 2011

Indeed they must be. But while Blake might have lived in relative obscurity for the past decade, even after all these years one thing is certain: he is still dividing opinion.

Last week a biopic of Amy's tragic life was released in the cinema, and Blake — as played by handsome actor Jack O'Connell — is centre stage. In many ways this is understandable: as Amy's only husband, he was always said to be the love of her life.

Following the film's release, Blake — who has spent time in prison for burglary and assault — went on Good Morning Britain to say how happy he was with his portrayal.

He explained that he found the film — called Back To Black after the iconic 2006 album that catapulted Amy to global stardom — 'almost therapeutic in a way', and said that he believed some parts were 'a more accurate representation' of their relationship than he was used to seeing.

'Not in a sense of being let off the hook or whitewashed, as [has] been alluded to ... just in a sense of it wasn't all about addiction,' he said.

While the movie, which stars Marisa Abela as Amy, shows him swaggering into the singer's life and sweeping her off her feet in a London pub in 2005 with a lip-synced rendition of The Shangri-Las' Leader Of The Pack, crucial elements of their history are missing.

While Amy was instantly taken with the tattooed production assistant, in real life, soon after they met, she asked him if she could share his heroin and he let her. But this is not featured in the film. Yet drugs were a major feature of their relationship, with Amy herself once saying their 'whole marriage was based on doing drugs'.

In 2013, Blake admitted Amy had asked to try heroin while he was smoking it, saying: 'I might have put up a weak resistance — the fact is whatever I said, she did end up having some.

'Of course I regret it, not just because of the damage it's caused Amy and the loss of life, but the damage to her family, but also to my family and also to me.'

Despite his remorse, given how heroin ravaged her life, friends of the late star can't understand how Blake can now be portrayed as such a 'decent guy'.

As one put it: 'He comes across like a Disney prince.'

His sympathetic depiction is especially perplexing given that even Amy's father Mitch — despised by many of her friends — hated him and accused Blake of being 'manipulative'. Yet Mitch has been 'heavily involved' with the making of the film, working alongside director Sam Taylor-Johnson.

'Mitch never liked Blake and blamed him for a lot of her problems, which is why it's so odd they made him out to be this saint in the film,' says one of Amy's closest friends.

'It's all just very, very odd. They've completely re-written history with their relationship and what Blake was really like.

Marisa Abela and Jack O'Connell star in Back To Black, which has been criticised for 'whitewashing' elements of Amy's life

'It was hard for Amy to move on after Blake. She spoke about him often and how much she still loved him, but then Reg Traviss came along [Amy started dating the film director in the months before her death] and he made her really happy. Their relationship was more stable than anything she ever had with Blake and much less "Sid and Nancy".'

Blake's life had been troubled well before he met Amy.

Blake, from Northamptonshire, dropped out of school at 17 and slept rough for a while. After moving to London, he worked as a music video production assistant and was also a part-time literature student.

He was in another relationship when he met Amy, which ended within a month, and they became inseparable. She had 'Blake' tattooed on her chest and he got 'Amy' inked behind his ear.

Yet six months later he returned to his ex. The split was the inspiration for Amy's album Back To Black.

The couple later reunited, and married in a secret ceremony in Miami in 2007. However, their relationship was tumultuous and also became violent — though that, too, is not portrayed in the film.

There was the now-notorious photo: him with scratches on his neck; her in smeared eye make-up and bloodied ballet pumps, which he has since said was taken after a row in which he self-harmed.

In 2008, he was jailed for assaulting a pub landlord and they split again.

Blake, who went on to have two children with a woman he met in rehab, continued his on-off relationship with Amy in 2010. But in 2011 he was jailed for burglary and possession of an imitation firearm, and she died while he was still in prison. He was banned from the funeral by her family and later angered them further by making a £1 million claim on her estate.

In a recent interview, Blake said he regrets 'almost everything' he did during their relationship, adding: 'I've carried that burden myself for over ten years. I feel, to be honest, that I'm the only person within that story that's ever held any accountability, that's ever tried to say, "Yep, I made some huge mistakes".'

Certainly, it's not just Blake's portrayal that has angered Amy's friends.

Their overwhelming view, I'm told, is that she would have 'absolutely, 100 per cent hated this movie'.

They accuse her father Mitch, who runs her estate and a foundation in her name to help young people affected by drug abuse, of not allowing her to rest in peace. He was smiling for the cameras when he appeared on the red carpet at the film's premiere alongside his ex-wife and Amy's mother Janis — giving it a very public seal of approval.

'She would have despised all of this,' one friend said.

Mitch, who launched his own singing career off the back of his daughter's and released an album shortly before Amy died, is, nevertheless, portrayed in a 'super positive light', according to her friend.

'We were told that Mitch had been very involved with people within the movie business to make it happen,' says the friend. 'None of us were surprised when we discovered that the movie had shown him in such a good light.'

But they added: 'It was her friends who she was with, day in, day out.

'None of us were approached [for background for the film]. They didn't want to hear any of the stories we had about Amy or the times we shared with her.

'Not a single one of her friends have been asked. Amy was always playing her guitar, there was always music and laughter. Amy was so loving, she just loved love and was so fun and jovial to be around.

'It's not a true adaptation of her life. How could it be when they didn't bother to take the time to speak to all those who were with her day to day?

'For example, they say that Blake introduced Amy to The Shangri-Las but again that is not true. They were one of her favourite bands and she'd known about them for years. It's such a weird thing to make up in the movie.

The singer with Blake, whom she divorced in 2009 after a rocky, on-off relationship

'She was obsessed with romance, that's why she loved all those 1960s songs, doing things for your man, laying down in the middle of the road to get his attention; she always had this fascination with those kinds of songs.'

Those close to Amy are also furious with the casting of Abela, star of the BBC drama Industry, because her voice is nowhere near as good at the star's. One pal describes her as a 'karaoke Amy', adding: 'It's just awful.'

Meanwhile, Mitch — who is played by Eddie Marsan in the film — despite being depicted as 'father of the year' according to one friend, has been hugely criticised for allowing ghoulish scenes of her drug overdose to be filmed at her old flat in North London, which he owns.

Viewers see Amy on a stretcher wearing an oxygen mask as she is put into an ambulance by paramedics.

Instead of Blake or Mitch, Taylor-Johnson's wrath is aimed at the paparazzi, who are portrayed as the villains for being outside Amy's house so often.

However, in reality they would often give her lifts to Tesco so she could do her shopping, and in return she would invite them in for tea.

On more than one occasion, a paparazzo paid for her taxis as she didn't have any cash.

And the singer used to enjoy chatting to the pack of photographers about her time at the now defunct showbiz news agency WENN, where she worked as an assistant as a teenager.

Danny Hayward, who has run several of Britain's biggest news photography agencies — including at the height of Amy's fame — was among those who hit back at the director's portrayal of the media.

He told the Mail: 'Nobody is saying the media or photographers are perfect, of course they're not, but to make them the villain of this story is just plain wrong. It's a lazy old stereotype.

Blake appearing on Good Morning Britain last week following the release of the new Amy Winehouse biopic Back To Black

'Amy was very famous, and a lot of the time she went out of her way to be photographed as she got more and more successful — she understood that was a good way for her to push her music, and she loved it.

'Many of the photographers working around that time got to know her personally; they liked her and would share jokes and banter. This film ignores all of that.

'Of course it was newsworthy when [Blake] was arrested at her house, and sadly she became quite troubled and, yes, there were lots of photographs documenting those moments, too, but nobody wanted to see her suffer.

'Sam Taylor-Johnson is looking to find a scapegoat, and seems to have portrayed Blake as some sort of loveable rogue and pointed at the media instead. But it's totally wrong, it's biased and it does a disservice to Amy's story.'

So it is perhaps no surprise, then, that many of Amy's friends have decided to boycott the movie.

'It's actually quite sad that the film is so bad,' says one. 'We will not be paying to go to the cinema to see it. We've got absolutely no interest at all because it's such a fabrication of what really went on. It all feels quite raw to watch a film about one of your friends who is no longer here.

'She was such a bright light in all of our lives. They should have celebrated her like that.'