Amy Winehouse’s ex-husband has expressed regret for exposing her to hard drugs, but claims that her addiction grew worse while they were apart.

Due to his stints in jail, Blake Fielder-Civil claims the two of them only spent four months doing drugs together as “addicts”

He recounted his grief when jail personnel told him Winehouse had died in an emotional interview on ITV’s Jeremy Kyle Show, which aired yesterday.

“Out of maybe a six or seven-year relationship that me and Amy had on and off, there was drug use for about four months together.” Blake, who was married to the singer for two years, said of their heroin and crack use.

He went on to say: “We used heroin together as addicts for like four months, then I went to jail. Then it got a lot worse while I was in jail and then when I came out of jail I was told that if I loved her I’d divorce her and set her free and I did.”

Before she was exposed to heroin, the 34-year-old admitted to using it “three or four times”

He stated that they were staying in an east London hotel room and that he had a £10 batch.

“I was smoking it on foil and she said can I try some and I said… I might have put up a weak resistance – the fact is whatever I said she did end up having some,” he added. “I have to be really sort of conscious about what I say – I don’t want to feel like I’m shirking responsibility. The fact is what I’m saying is of course I regret it, not just ‘cos of the damage it’s caused Amy and the loss of life, but the damage to her family but also to my family and also to me.”

“You know we’ve all sort of gone through this addiction.”

Blake revealed that he and Amy had contemplated reuniting.

He went on to say: “She said that her doctor had said to her, you’re never not going to be in love with Blake, and Amy had said ‘yeah I know’ and she asked me if she could come and visit me and I’d written a letter saying ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do, of course I’m always going to love you’. And then we had a correspondence for about a week where we sort of ummed and aahed about it and then in the end it was sort of like what are we doing?”

Winehouse died in July 2011 from unintentional alcohol poisoning, according to a second inquest last month.

Winehouse’s family, particularly her father Mitch, advised him to abandon the marriage, according to Fielder-Civil.

“He said if you love her really you’ll divorce her,” he explained.

“I spoke to Amy about it and we sort of agreed that it would get everyone off our backs at least you know and we’d probably re-marry.”

He said he was informed of her death by senior prison staff who took him out of his cell to deliver the news, but he couldn’t accept it and assumed it was an online hoax. “So I made them show me about six or seven websites and each time they showed me the computer, I’m finding it harder and harder to say no, you know. And eventually I think they got the BBC up and they updated it so it was within the past minute and obviously at that point, I broke down and couldn’t stop crying – and then I had to get put back in my cell.”