Mitch Winehouse remembers his daughter Amy as a baby Amy was a beautiful baby with lovely big eyes, and everyone who met her made a huge fuss of her. She was sweet, and hardly cried. I used to wake her up just to talk to her or play games, and I think I may have done that here. I ran a double glazing business and would go out in the evenings on sales appointments, so I didn't see Amy as much as I would have liked. I used to come home about 10.30pm and would always be excited to get back and wake her up. Her mother, Janis, used to go crazy about that. Amy must have been almost a year old when this photograph was taken. She started walking not long after this at her first birthday party. I would love to be able to say that Amy was born singing with a powerful voice, but the truth is she wasn't very tuneful when she was little. She did love to sing though, and I used to play a game with her, which my mum, Cynthia, played with me, where you leave out the last word of a song for someone else to sing. I would sing 'Fly me to the..." and Amy would sing 'moon." Amy was a mischievous child and her primary schoolteacher told me that whenever she was in trouble at school she would sing Fly Me to the Moon to cheer herself up. The first time I heard Amy sing properly was when she was eight or nine. I had a convertible Saab and we used to drive with the roof down on summer's days. I remember she would sing Sinatra songs at the top of her voice, and when we stopped at traffic lights she would be standing up on the seat, singing as loudly as she possibly could. Her brother, Alex, used to say to her, 'Sit down, you're making a spectacle of yourself," but I knew then she had the potential to be a successful singer. I introduced Amy to the music of Frank Sinatra, as well as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and Janis liked Carole King and Sting. But I think my mum had the biggest influence on Amy. She used to be Ronnie Scott's girlfriend and told Amy a lot about the history of jazz. They had a wonderful relationship because she looked after Amy a lot when Janis and I were working. Before Amy died last July I was commissioned to write a book about the Winehouse family because there are some incredible characters, including my mum. But when Amy passed away I decided to write her story instead. I wrote it last year between August and November, and found writing it cathartic and very helpful in terms of recovery. There's a side to Amy, her kindness and generosity, which people don't know. Amy, My Daughter" by Mitch Winehouse (HarperCollins) is published on Thursday. All author proceeds will go to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which helps young people disadvantaged by illness and substance addiction (amywinehousefoundation.org)