The Amy Winehouse story has become both depressing and repetitive, but from time to time she throws a genuinely surprising backfllip into her downward spiral. The latest twist involves her getting stuck with perhaps the largest dry cleaning bill in history, after borrowing a number of outfits from British designer Harvey Nichols and then barfing all over them. Actually, that’s not really accurate. The truth is a bit more complicated and, if possible, even more distasteful. It started when Amy decided that one of these expensive, elegant ensembles was just the thing to wear to a pub crawl:

She ended up in the loos, where she was violently sick. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. She eventually couriered [the clothes] back on Monday (22Sep08), but didn’t wrap them separately. So sick had gone on all the clothes. Even worse, green, furry mould had developed on some gowns, making them unwearable.”

Nichols, understandably peeved by this critical comment on his designs, is sticking Amy with a $46,250 bill for the outfits that were destroyed by her stomach contents and for salvaging the rest. Also, she’s now on his lifetime “do not lend clothes to” list, although why she hasn’t been on every designer’s shit list for at least two years now is one of life’s mysteries. On top of her £1000-a-day drug habit and the—let’s be charitable here—remote likelihood of her ever recording again, this can’t be good news for Amy. But it’s probably not the last piece of news we’ll be reading about her.