

Soon after she began working for a living, as an entertainment journalist for the World Entertainment News Network and also singing with local group the Bolsha Band. Īfter toying around with her brother Alex's guitar, Winehouse bought her own guitar when she was 14 and began writing music shortly afterwards. She attended the Mount School, Mill Hill and the BRIT School in Selhurst, Croydon, dropping out at age 16. I'd never have expelled Amy." Mitch Winehouse also denied the claims. Several years later it was reported that Winehouse had been expelled at 14 for "not applying herself" and also for piercing her nose, but these claims were denied by Sylvia Young: "She changed schools at 15.I've heard it said she was expelled she wasn't. She attended the school for four years and founded a short-lived rap group called Sweet 'n' Sour, with Juliette Ashby, her childhood friend, before seeking full-time training at Sylvia Young Theatre School. In 1992, her grandmother Cynthia suggested that Amy attend the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School, where she went on Saturdays to further her vocal education and to learn to tap dance. Winehouse's parents separated when she was nine, and she lived with her mother and stayed with her father and his girlfriend in Hatfield Heath, Essex, on weekends. Her father, Mitch, often sang Frank Sinatra songs to her, and whenever she was chastised at school, she would sing " Fly Me to the Moon" before going up to the headmistress to be told off. She and Amy's parents influenced Amy's interest in jazz. Amy's paternal grandmother, Cynthia, had been a singer and had dated the English jazz saxophonist Ronnie Scott.
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Many of Winehouse's maternal uncles were professional jazz musicians. In the same interview, Winehouse said she only went to a synagogue once a year on Yom Kippur "out of respect". During an interview following her rise to fame, she expressed her dismissal towards the school by saying that she used to beg her father to permit her not to go and that she learned nothing about being Jewish by going anyway. Winehouse attended a Jewish Sunday school while she was a child. The family lived in London's Southgate area, where she attended Osidge Primary School. She had an older brother, Alex (born 1979).

Winehouse's great-great-grandfather Harris Winehouse emigrated from Minsk, Belarus, to London in 1891. Her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2003.
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Her father, Mitchell "Mitch" Winehouse, was a window panel installer and taxi driver her mother, Janis Winehouse (née Seaton), was a pharmacist.

