Amy Winehouse Campaigns to Save Pub

Originally posted Monday February 04, 2008 09:30 AM EST

Amy Winehouse: Political activist?

The rehabbing singer is pitching in to help preserve The George Tavern, one of her favorite London pubs.

Before she entered into a U.K. treatment center, the Grammy-nominee suggested selling t-shirts to campaign against a planned apartment development which, opponents say, will ruin the bar's unusual 360-degree light. (Parts of the pub date back to 1654, and the atmospheric lighting has been much praised by artists and directors.)

"Amy's a friend, so I went to her flat to see her and she was there with her hairdresser Alex [Foden]," the pub's landlady Pauline Forster tells PEOPLE. "We started talking about the way forward and she said, 'We've got to do a Save The George t-shirt.'"

(The singer did some photo shoots, including one for the cover of her album, at the music venue. Another famous visitor: Justin Timberlake.)

Kate Moss – who has been photographed wearing the $50 t-shirt – has also pledged to "do all she can," Forster said.

As for Winehouse, Forster has not been able to speak with the singer since she entered rehab.

"She's not well, so nobody's allowed to contact her," Forster said. "I spoke to her on the phone twice before she went into rehab, and I've spoken to her father a couple of times. He told me I could write her a letter, so I sent a handwritten one and popped a t-shirt in the post."

On Saturday afternoon, the singer left rehab briefly to visit with her father and her manager, who passed along bottles of Diet Coke and takeout from Nando's, a U.K. chain restaurant.