OPEN

By ROB JONES

While I’m yet to hear Dwain Chambers carry a note, I would bet all the medals in China that Amy Winehouse cannot run 60 metres in less than seven seconds. Not in those heels.

But the shamed Olympian-to-be and the - let’s be charitable - recovering pop junkie have something in common this week.

Despite being widely unforgiven by anyone of the slightest sporting influence for taking performance-enhancing drugs, sprinter Chambers has just been selected to represent Great Britain in Beijing this summer - a decision that has prompted derisive snorts audible over the JCBs in Stratford from Dame Kelly Holmes, Lord Sebastian Coe and other lesser-ranked sports stars.

Likewise, Amy’s haul of five Grammy Awards on Sunday hasn’t gone down well with everyone. Celebrity daughter Natalie Cole, who jointly announced Winehouse’s Rehab as Record of the Year, tut-tutted that honouring the beehived diva sent out the wrong message to struggling, more wholesome bands.

It’s understandable to raise eyebrows at the approval of an athlete who took drugs that gave him an unfair career advantage. But anyone who caught one of Winehouse’s shambolic mid-meltdown shows last year, before she ended up pulling the tour altogether, can verify that drugs do not work in every line of business.

Vetting process

Cole knows well enough that the music industry is not for the easily tempted. Exactly what proportion of struggling acts does she think are getting through long studio sessions on caffeine and rich tea biscuits alone?

Or does Winehouse warrant a greater punishment than more casual, softer drug users because her addiction is particularly severe? Is it OK for cocaine fans to have industry recognition up until the point that they end up in rehab or get caught out by the national papers? Presumably Winehouse didn’t make her first foray into mind-altering activities with a shot of heroin. Cole is obviously not from the “nip it in the bud” school of teaching.

So, where do you stop the vetting process? Should we discourage young music fans from listening to The Beatles because they were partial to a bit of LSD with their coffee? Is it reasonable to worry that Nirvana fans are going to overdose or blow their brains out if they listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit too much? Indeed, maybe Cole should hand back the three Grammy Awards she won in the 1970s - roughly about the time she was busted for heroin possession.

Reverse psychology

The genuine shock and delight on Winehouse’s healthy-looking, post-rehab face when her Record of the Year award was announced suggests her Grammy cargo might be enough to make her think about what she can achieve when she has her full wits about her.

It’s a risky gamble to bank on the opposite psychology and assume that blacklisting artists on drugs is an incentive to clean up. If anything’s likely to send a recovering addict for the tin foil, it’s a feeling of worthlessness from being publicly chastised.

There are plenty of other ways to get the message across. It would be no bad thing for record companies to introduce random drug-testing to keep their artists, at the very least, at a safe level of dependence. An artist so regularly off their face that they spit and slur their way through gigs is useless.

Winehouse was in a different place when she recorded Back To Black. If she can’t keep her nose clean for album number three, she won’t hear her name called out on many more awards occasions. But these trophies should be handed out for merit and Back To Black is a great album. If other artists, sober or not, don’t find themselves on nominations lists, they simply have to try a little harder.