SADLY, we’ll never know how Amy Winehouse’s career would have panned out, after she succumbed to a combination of the pressures of fame and her own personal demons in July 2011.

Could she have gone stratospheric, like an Adele, or disappear and do a Duffy?

It’s a moot point but, either way, she left us with a veritable treasure trove of fabulous songs and iconic imagery, a legacy which was lovingly celebrated at the Weymouth Pavilion Ocean Rooms.

As with many of our departed music icons - Bowie and Prince, for example - we are now left with tribute acts to keep their music alive and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more authentic and accurate one than this anywhere.

This marvellous show remembers and relives with affection and respect the Grammy-award winning Amy at the absolute zenith of her considerable powers, equally at home with soul, jazz, reggae, ska and torch songs, and eschews the tabloid-fodder car crash Amy of her later years.

Opening with Addicted, which considering the circumstances of her demise is supremely ironic, I could sense a huge collective gasp from the audience as Stacey Thomas emerged in a scarlet retro dress and immaculate beehive, an inked diva with that distinctive eye-liner, almost like a hologram, being beamed in from the supernatural world.

Sound issues early on were soon resolved and I felt a certain tension in the room, a combination of unfamiliar album tracks and the strong possibility we were watching a Xeroxed apparition of someone who had passed away, so authentic, so uncanny, were Stacey’s moves, stage presence and her voice.

Winehouse obsessives and completists would love the accuracy of the arrangements of her songs, all musically and lyrically complex but delivered with huge aplomb and panache by a top-notch band, all of whom, apart from the excellent three-piece DB Horns section, are regular combatants in Weymouth’s thriving live music scene.

But it is the biggies that brought an appreciative audience to their collective feet, Rehab, Tears Dry on Their Own, Back to Black, Love is a Losing Game, Our Day Will Come, Valerie, et al, and her numerous forays into ska - Rudi, You’re Wondering Now, Cupid, plus Monkey Man, of course - had the floor creaking with enthusiastic dancing.

A hugely impressive performance from everyone involved and a bright, promising future surely awaits on the tribute circuit.

NICK HORTON