Amy Winehouse Goes Bananas

04/06/09 12:34pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Amy Winehouse's erratic behaviour may already indicate that she's gone bananas, but now she seems to have taken that literally. She's returned to St. Lucia, where she's reportedly picked up a new habit: smoking banana skins.

Winehouse is house-hunting in the Caribbean island country, according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail tabloid, which also reports she's returned there to work on her next album.

Winehouse previously spent time on vacation in St. Lucia earlier this year, saving lives and allegedly having a fling.

"Amy wandered onto a private porch on Cariblue Beach and got chatting to a group of locals who were smoking banana skin," a source told the U.K.'s Daily Star tabloid.

"She made sure there wasn't anything really bad in them because she's being so good now.

"They made one in front of her using dried strings from the inside of the peel instead of tobacco, and putting it onto a Rizla.

"She loved it and has taken to drying her own peel in the sun and smoking it in the evening."

It was believed in the '60s that smoking banana peels released a psychoactive substance called bananadine, which allegedly got you high. Researchers at New York University discovered in 1967 that smoking banana peels only produces a placebo effect and that they contain no intoxicating chemicals, according to the Straight Dope blog.

Winehouse said she was clean and off drugs earlier this year. But she can't seem to stay out of trouble, regardless.

Wino randomly took off her bikini and started streaking half-naked through the hotel where she was staying, despite that the resort has a no nudity clause, according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper. The tabloid reports Winehouse did it to protest against officials who told her she couldn't walk around topless.

"Everyone was shocked," a source told the Daily Mail. "One minute Amy was relaxing with friends on the beach and the next she was running around half naked.

"She seems to like lounging around topless and might have had enough of being told what to do.

"She was talking to herself as she ran and flailing her arms around but we couldn't tell what she was saying — it didn't make a bit of sense."

Winehouse's behaviour also annoyed guests at the hotel she stayed at earlier this year.

Winehouse was to play the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival later this month, but had to cancel after she was charged with assault stemming from an incident in which she allegedly punched a woman at a charity event last year.

Winehouse is scheduled to perform at Island Records' 50th anniversary bash at London, England's O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire on May 31. That's if she can peel herself away from those banana skins, of course.