I was in North London last Wednesday and was stopped twice by tourists asking if I could give directions to ­Camden Square.

They wanted to join the throng of Amy Winehouse fans who were gathering outside her house for her unofficial wake.

But this being a vigil for Amy Winehouse, it involved bottles of vodka, fag ends, graffiti daubed on the walls, kids collapsed in the gutter in a drunken coma and an arrest for civil disturbance. Just what she would have wanted.

To them, Amy was the ultimate rock and roll idol. The girl who partied hard and died young. Way to go!

The real tragedy about her death at 27 is how one of our all-time greatest singer-songwriters is being lionised by her fans, not for her incredible musical talent, but for her wholesale self-abuse.

Because, behind all the glowing tributes that have flowed in over the past week, the sad truth is that Amy was a hopeless addict.

She was off-the-scale sick.

Her grieving dad Mitch tried to paint a bright picture of his only ­daughter at her funeral, but just hours before her death, she was reportedly seen buying a cocktail of drugs, including cocaine, ­ecstasy and ketamine.

Her last two live performances, in Serbia and London, were a write-off. She stumbled around the stage high as a kite barely able to sing a note.

When a girl in her 20s is seen shuffling around in blood-stained shoes – a sign of injecting heroin between her toes – and suffering from emphysema brought on by smoking crack cocaine, the ­writing is, sadly, on the wall.

Even her own mum and dad knew that their daughter was unlikely to reach her 30th birthday.

She beat that sad prediction by three years.

So let’s all enjoy Amy’s glorious music as it soars back into the top of the charts.

But let’s see her for what she actually was – a ­lesson ­rather than a role model.

Like most kids, my daughters have been asking lots of questions about how Amy died and instead of glossing over the truth, I’ve given them a straight answer: mess with drugs and look what can happen.

Look how they made this ­brilliant, beautiful girl throw away her God-given talent, her adoring family, friends and her glittering future. Even if you’ve everything to live for, you can still puff it all away on a crack pipe.

Last week Amy’s dad faced the heartbreaking job of clearing out the house where she died.

As a thank you to her fans who’d kept a vigil outside her home, he thoughtfully handed out handfuls of her clothes.

But if Mitch really wanted his daughter to leave behind a legacy beyond her music, he would also hand out some brutal advice to her fans: lionise her talent but don’t ever lionise the way she chose to live her life.