IT'S a sign of Amy Winehouse's tabloid profile that normal chit-chat can feel loaded with significance. Upon meeting her in the bar of Dublin's Berkeley Court hotel she asks how my day has been. I tell her I've just come from the gym, which I have.

But I could swear that the skinny Londoner with the beehive hairdo clocks me twice. I feel I have to explain that I'm not trying to entrap her into a conversation about eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder or anything of the like. I tell her if she feels like a workout, the gym is only up the road. She orders another glass of wine and a tequila on the sly. The Jewish Londoner's second album, Back To Black, reached top spot on the British charts and narrowly missed out on No 1 here. She has been nominated for two Brit Awards and plays the Meteor Awards in Dublin on Thursday.

Now is more about toasting success.

"I'm really proud of it, " she says warmly. And she should be. Back To Black was one of the most striking, sexy albums to come out last year. It's romantic and heartbreaking; there's a bit of Nina Simone here, a dash of Billie Holiday there, all with a twist of Shirley Bassey's bombast. It's no surprise then that she is front-runner to sing the theme tune to the next Bond movie. If she can keep it together of course.

While 2006 was Winehouse's biggest year yet, she has rarely been out of the tabloids for her drunken exploits. She admits to being a nasty drunk but seems to remain carefree about the headlines it draws. She never thought her music career would come to this. She's just enjoying the ride.

"I wanted to be a journalist, " she says. "I was studying journalism and doing gigs on the weekend and this fella came to see me play and he asked me if I wanted some studio time. I said, 'What for?' and he said, 'To make an album. . ."

A former acting student (who was apparently expelled from the same school that Katie Melua and Leona Lewis attended), Winehouse worked for a glossy mag but soon got bored. "I did my apprenticeship and wrote for them for a bit and then just wanted to do reception. I wanted to do more diverse stuff. I've always been like that, changing things. I'm not a proud person in that way - I have no problem making someone a cup of tea."

It was there she met Chris, her (now ex-) boyfriend who was to become the lyrical inspiration behind 2003's Mercury Awardnominated debut album, Frank. It was around this time that certain influential people in the industry began to get involved in her career.

She employed a management company that led to suspicions Simon Fuller, who managed the Spice Girls and S Club 7 as well as creating the Pop Idol phenomenon, was behind Winehouse's rise to prominence.

Amy pauses before getting into this. "It's important I get this right, " she says. "I was managed by a guy called Nick Godwin who was funded by Simon Fuller. I've literally met [Fuller] once. As soon as my contract was up I ran away."

It must be said that the Winehouse extended family is steeped in music. Her grandmother had a relationship with a prominent jazz musician in the 1940s, and some of her uncles are also jazz musicians.

Her parents, now divorced, were fond listeners of American music such as Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and Frank Sinatra.

But still the stories of manufactured success wouldn't go away.

There is even the story that her smash hit single 'Rehab' was written after the management company insisted she go to treatment to protect their investment.

"The reason you heard that is the guy who did everything for the first album wasn't the guy who got 20%, " she says, adding that her introduction to Fuller began with her friend, the soul singer Tyla James, who passed on her demos to the PR svengali. James personally bankrolled Winehouse, getting her equipment and the rehearsal space she needed to get Frank off the ground.

"We were so close that he did so much for me for nothing and I love him and I respect that. He's still like my big brother. I think he was at the end of his rope. After the end of a particularly nasty drunken episode he called my dad who said you gotta come and see me and stay a couple of days. So I said okay I'll come and stay."

They suggested she go and take an assessment in a treatment centre. "I said great [sarcastically]. I walked in and the guy said, 'Why do you think you are here?' I said 'I am drinking a lot, I'm in love and I f**ked it up and I'm a manic depressive.' Then he asked me if I thought I was an alcoholic and I said 'maybe'. I didn't want to say no because he might think I'm in denial. He started talking and I kind of switched off and 15 minutes later I went, 'Thanks very much.' I genuinely believe that if you can't sort yourself out no one else can. Afterwards, I asked my dad: 'Do you think I need to go to rehab, really?' And he said, 'No.'" Last year, the tabloid media was all over Winehouse's bony back. In fairness, the photographs of her around the release of Frank show a more buxom 20-year-old. The Daily Mail, that august custodian of all that is right, suggested she had dropped four dress sizes of late. How does she feel about all this? "Around the time I did my first album I started getting into health, " she says absently, before adding that the difference is really down to her changing patterns of marijuana smoking. Yes, it was the evil weed and those cursed munchies that made her plump.

"When I stopped smoking weed that made all the difference, " she says. So she stopped smoking altogether? "Yeah, if someone had a joint now I'd take a bit and give it back straight away. When I was in New York around the time of my first album I hung out with these 60-year-old rastas and they would be like 'Roll your own, roll your own, '" she shrieks in laughter.

This new-found self control is allied to a punishing exercise regimen. "The gym is probably the most addictive thing I've ever done. If you haven't been for three days you start to feel really depressed. When I've been to the gym for a week on the trot I literally skip down the street whistling and singing."

But doesn't it bother her that, like Nicole Richie, she is constantly accused of having an eating disorder? She has previously admitted to "having a little bit of bulimia, a little bit of anorexia", but today she's having none of it.

"Nah, maybe it should, " she says matter of factly. "I don't care. I eat right but because I have so much energy maybe I don't eat enough. I won't eat pasta. I'll eat mashed potatoes and I won't eat bread but I will eat rice. I run around so much, literally. I don't care really."

» Amy Winehouse plays the Meteor Music Awards in the Point Theatre, Dublin on Thursday, the Ulster Hall in Belfast on 1 March and Dublin's Ambassador on 2 March » 'Back To Black' is out now on Island/Universal

How Amy feeds the tabloids

Getting drunk and acting the maggot At the South Bank Awards in London last week, the Sun newspaper reported that Winehouse was booted out of the Savoy Hotel in London for singing around a piano with Jamie Cullum at the aftershow party. Well, she had won the award. . .

Getting drunk for television performances On the Charlotte Church show she attempted to sing Michael Jackson's 'Beat It'. Don't believe me? See for yourself on www. youtube. com/watch? v=2vfdl7-E80Q In December she was drunk again on the Ryan Tubridy show, slurring the words to 'Rehab' to an incredulous audience Getting gobby At the Q Awards ceremony in October last year: Winehouse heckled Bono during a speech, reportedly shouting: "Shut up, I don't give a f***!"

And the coup de grâce. . .

At the Proud Gallery in London after a gig last autumn a fan came up to her to applaud the gig and subsequently told her boyfriend that Amy was "f***ed".

Pint-sized Amy said: "So I just punched her right in the face - which she wasn't expecting, because girls don't do that. My bloke Alex took me outside to calm me down - and I kneed him in the balls then punched him in his face, too."

Compiled by Neil Dunphy