Boy George Irish heritage, witty and waspish, one of the first openly gay pop stars has a touch of Oscar Wilde about him. Now he faces his Reading Gaol moment, amid circumstances that make Wilde's notorious trial look prim.
This month a court found him guilty of falsely imprisoning a male escort who claimed that the singer, real name George O'Dowd, had manacled him to a wall and whipped him with a chain after a nude photo shoot.
I certainly wasn't going to kill him, George is reported to have told police. That's hardly going to do my career any good is it?
Well, no but the judge, before passing sentence next month, has warned him to expect a jail term regardless.
W.B. Yeats, who visited Wilde while he was on bail, thought the writer showed great courage and manhood amid the collapse of his fortunes. Today's age is more tolerant of scandal, and Boy George has grown used to his fortunes collapsing (heroin addiction in the 1980s, community service for cocaine possession in New York in 2006) yet it showed courage, too, for the bailed singer to honour his booking at the Pigalle Club, a plush supper-club venue so small that he was able to identify members of the audience individually.
Opening with a jaunty new song, Vote 4 Love, he looked surprisingly cheerful as he swayed beneath a pink hat bearing a sequined skull and crossbones motif. His voice has thickened considerably since his Culture Club days (ditto his girth), yet he still sounded solidly soulful. Vocal fireworks were provided by an excellent pair of female backing singers.
The set consisted of Culture Club hits, including (The irony of it all, George sighed) Do You Really Want to Hurt Me; covers of reggae, country and glam rock songs; and unreleased tracks that showcased an optimistic pop-gospel direction.
It was sturdily enjoyable, with one genuinely touching highlight: a piano-led Culture Club number, dedicated to his mother in the audience, whose lyrics You'll be sorry in the morning/When we tell you/Mama had tears in her eyes/She's the only one who never cries echoed Wilde's line from The Ballad of Reading Gaol, that each man kills the thing he loves.
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