Whitney Houston’s chauffeur of 20 years, Al Bowman, has spoken out in the wake of the 48-year-old star’s death about how he witnessed firsthand the star’s path of self destruction.

The chauffeur who drove Whitney Houston for two decades revealed how he has driven many famous faces during his career as a chauffeur, including both Janet and Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osborne, but out of all of the celebrity names, Whitney’s behaviour was by far the most extreme and worrying, Mr Bowman revealed in an interview with The Mirror newspaper.

In his interview, the chauffeur described how he had wanted desperately to help the Bodyguard star, but Whitney was beyond to help and hopelessly addicted to drugs, with the chauffeur describing in the singer as “tragic.”

Al Bowman retold a story of how Whitney and her former husband Bobbi Brown set the limo he was driving on fire as they smoked crack in the back of the luxury car. In a separate incident, the celebrity chauffeur revealed he even saw the troubled star smoking crack in the back of his limo, while her daughter Bobbi Kristina, who was aged 6 or 7 years at the time, sat next to her, with Al branding the incident “heartbreaking.”

Sources close to the singer say she managed to kick her drug taking habit and was sober throughout much of 2011. However Whitney is believed to have fallen back into her old ways in the months leading up to her death. The singer was found dead in the bath tub of her hotel room at The Beverley Hilton Hotel at the age of 48.