‘She was the love of my life'

Amy’s best friend opens up for the first time about his soulmate

- Wade Sellers

While a decade has passed since singer Amy Winehouse’s tragic death, her best friend Tyler James still remembers it as if it were yesterday.

“It was the most awful day,” Tyler, who had been living with Amy in her London home at the time, tells Woman’s Day. “I’ll never get over it.”

On the morning of July 23, 2011, Tyler returned home to Amy’s frantic security guard Andrew pacing the hallway. He said he’d found Amy unresponsive in her room. Used to her relapses and having just spoken to her hours earlier, Tyler strolled into the kitchen to make her a cup of tea while making a mental list of belongings to pack for her to go to the hospital. However, after two ambulances pulled up outside, he knew something was wrong.

“I ran upstairs to her room and was trying to get through, but Andrew was blocking the doorway,” Tyler, 39, recalls.

“I was still trying to break through when the first paramedic walked up and said a sentence that ended my world, ‘I’m sorry, mate, but she’s long gone. She isn’t even warm anymore’,” he adds. “It killed me. My Amy. My girl. She was gone.”

Amy had died from alcohol poisoning aged just 27, following a highly publicized battle with drug and alcohol addiction.