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The smell of cannabis hangs in the air, and the hallways are frequented by drug dealers, but it's home to Amy Winehouse's ex husband who now 'never speaks about her'.Blake Fielder-Civil's life in a poky bedsit in a grafitti covered block of flats is a world away from the wealth he once enjoyed as the husband of Amy Winehouse.

The former music video assistant met the Back to Black singer in 2005 and they were married from 2007 to 2009. But while their toxic romance inspired a number of the singer's biggest hits, few approved of their union. From the moment they met, friends say the Amy they knew disappeared.

"Amy changed overnight," Nick Shymansky, Amy's first manager and a close friend, told the Telegraph. "For six years she was completely consistent and then all of a sudden it was like dealing with a different person. There were glimpses of the Amy I knew right up until the end, but something really changed. My view at the time, and my view now, is that she was intoxicated with heavy drugs as soon as she met Blake."

• Blake Fielder-Civil's ex-girlfriend found dead at home – what we know

Indeed, Amy - who would start her shows chanting 'Class A drugs are for mugs' - was quickly sucked into the world of heroin and crack cocaine with video production assistant Blake. "She'd be talking gibberish. And then all of a sudden she had a stammer. That was the thing that really upset me."

Blake, who had moved from Lincolnshire to carve out a career in London, admitted introducing her to heroin, telling Jeremy Kyle: "I was smoking it on foil and she said can I try some and I said … I might have put up a weak resistance – the fact is whatever I said she did end up having some. I have to be really sort of conscious about what I say, I don't want to feel like I'm shirking responsibility. 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."

Amy was smitten. Just a month after meeting she got a tattoo above her left breast of a pocket flap with the wording "Blake's" above it. But thinks turned even darker soon after when Blake went back to an ex-girlfriend. Heartbroken, Amy started drinking more than ever but her management's attempts to get her to rehab were famously rebuffed.

"Up until probably March 2006, not long before Back to Black was recorded and delivered, it was a nightmare," Shymansky added. "There were lots of arguments, lots of passionate conversations. It was absolutely clear to me that she wasn't well and she needed help."

By April 2007 they were back together, and they married in Miami, US, the following month. As their drug use escalated, they were pictured looking bruised and bloodied, wandering around the streets of Soho, London. She collapsed after doing a 'speedball' of cocaine and heroin with Blake, and was rushed to hospital for an adrenaline shot and stomach pump.

"Amy looked like a skeleton because she was so thin," a friend told The Mirror at the time. "She was foaming at the mouth and fitting for about a minute... River Phoenix died from an overdose after a speedball, so Amy is really very lucky to be alive."

Blake reportedly left her hospital bedside to score more drugs, sparking a huge fall out with Amy's dad Mitch. They checked into rehab together later that year, but in November, he was jailed for 12 months after a 2006 bar fight. In April 2008, Amy is said to have confessed to cheating on him while he was in jail and he filed for divorce soon after

After their split, Amy got off crack and heroin but was still hooked on booze. Blake went back to rehab, where he started seeing another patient called Sarah Aspin. But despite being divorced - and having a son called Jack with Sarah - his romance with Amy was far from over.

Sarah even warned Amy to "keep her hands off" Blake, telling her: "He is mine and we are a family now." Just days later, as Blake began a 32-month prison sentence for burglary and a firearm offence in 2011, Amy was found dead in her bed from alcohol poisoning. Fifteen months later, Blake was put into an induced coma after suffering a drug overdose but eventually pulled through.

Her love rival Sarah suffered an equally tragic fate, and was found dead at her council maisonette in Leeds, West Yorkshire, last weekend. As well as having son Jack in 2011, she and Blake were also welcomed daughter Lola-Rose in April 2013, but both children were put up for adoption after his worried mum Georgette Civil called social services.

In her book titled Letting Blake Go, she wrote: "I looked down at Jack in his pushchair and thought, 'I can't condemn you to a life with junkies'. We went to see Lola. I held her in my arms for the first and last time. I kissed her goodbye and walked away from her, Blake and Jack, feeling as if my heart was breaking. I knew I would never see any of them again.

"I rang social services and betrayed my own son. I told them Blake was still a drug user and that I had provided clean urine samples. Blake phoned me two days later. He was crying, screaming and pleading with me to withdraw my statement - but I didn't. I never heard from my son again and I know I never will."

In 2021, Georgette lost her other son Feddie, 27, to a heroin overdose after he ran away from a mental health unit and checked into a £40-a-night B&B in Leeds.

Police are now probing 47-year-old Sarah's death. Georgette paid tribute and admitted she suspects that Blake has no idea that the mother of his children is dead. "It's absolutely tragic – truly tragic. [But] I would have thought Blake doesn't know," she told the Daily Mail.

Blake is believed to have separated from Sarah and to be living in a run-down bedsit in Headingley, Leeds. Neighbours say the area is blighted by drug use, but that Blake - who once worked on videos for Lily Allen - 'keeps his head down' and 'never talks about Amy'. 'Blakey is alright, he keeps himself to himself. But from what happened with Amy, and where she took him, to where he is now. It's crazy," the neighbour said. "He keeps his head down. He's not an issue. But other people are up to all sorts."

However, The Sun reports that he's not been seen there for three months and is believed to have moved in with a new girlfriend. It's a tragic outcome for a man who was once a privately-educated school pupil with the world at his feet.

After Amy's death in 2011, Sarah spoke of his heartbreaking. She visited him in prison shortly after the news and said: "He is devastated and shattered. He just can't take it in that she's dead and he'll never see her again. Blake rang me on Saturday after the prison authorities told him she'd died. I just couldn't console him. He was in total shock. Blake is the father of our son. But I saw him and Amy together and I know they were really in love and they were soulmates.

"She always loved him and he always loved her - but it was just never going to work. Basically they couldn't live with each other and they could not live without each other."