Amy Winehouse kept the audience in Belgrade waiting for more than an hour

Before she blew it completely, before she staggered on stage out of her mind on intoxicants, Amy Winehouse kept the audience in Belgrade waiting for more than an hour.

At first, the crowd in the city’s Kalemegdan Park didn’t seem to mind too much. After all, this was the first date in Amy’s keenly anticipated summer tour of European festivals, which were to include gigs in Greece, Spain and Switzerland.

And the show on Saturday night was to have marked a glorious return for the troubled star, who has just finished a stint in rehab. They tried to make her go to the Priory, and this time she said yes, yes, yes — and no wonder.

A long-promised album from Winehouse had failed to appear in the shops. A shaky performance in Dubai four months ago was cut short following booing from the audience.

Yet by Saturday, apparently, the 27-year-old star was clean and sober, back on top of her game. This was to have been her triumphant comeback — and many Serbian fans had saved to buy their tickets in good faith.

The lights dimmed. Eventually, a slight figure appeared onstage. She wore a tiny dress, tighter than a banana skin, her demi-beehive piled up like sooty candy floss. Outrage: Fans, who had paid a lot of money to see her play, turned on the star afterwards and called the show a 'disaster' After giving one of her backing singers a glassy-eyed hug, Amy sat down and took off a shoe. Looking confused, she stood up, bawled out half a song and then fell down. She got up again. ‘Hello Athens,’ she said to the Belgrade audience. Later she seemed to think she was in New York. She left the stage for ten minutes and came back to caterwaul some more, then throw away her microphone before unravelling in front of a local audience of 20,000 and a global audience of millions.

Look at her. On the Belgrade stage Amy’s constant clawing of her bare arms and her nose, her slurred speech and her blank stare tell their own story of determined abuse.