Black Country helped heal star's heart

Everyone has suffered a broken heart at some time in their lives and few have taken the drastic step of moving to the Black Country to mend it.

But that was exactly what eighties survivor Boy George did as a teenager in love.

Thirty years ago, before he hit the big time with Culture Club and their multi-million selling hits Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?, the London-born singer, famed for his androgynous looks and bright make-up, lived with four friends in a former dentist's surgery converted into a flat in Goodall Street, Walsall.

Every day he would catch the train into Birmingham where he worked in a clothes shop in the Bullring.

The 47-year-old said his time in the flat in Walsall was a mixed bag. 

“The best thing was living right next door to a market, so we could go shopping whenever we felt like it. It was a bit tough getting to the train station, dressed the way we always were. We got a lot of shouts every time we made a break for it.

“I was only about 17 when I had my heart broken and wanted to leave home. My mother said it was OK as long as I went to Birmingham where I could check in with my aunt and grandmother. My aunt still lives in Edgbaston.

“One day while I was walking down the street I saw this vision across the street and he turned out to be Martin Degville.”

Degville would go on to front the punk band Sigue Sigue Sputnik but Boy George, born George Alan O'Dowd, worked in his shop Degville's Dispensary, selling clothes, or “DIY fashion” as he called it.

George laughed off the idea that it was this that inspired his own clothing line, 

B Rude, launched in 2006. “They are very different styles”, he said. “Back then we used to get funny looks wandering through the markets by the Bullring. All the ladies with the beehive hairdos and the Spock eyebrows would stare at us and we'd wonder if they thought they looked any more normal.”

Fame came at a price and for George it was the constant glare of the media. But despite his drug taking, his arrest in New York after he called police to his home where they found cocaine, and his conviction for wasting police time, he remains matter-of-fact about his portrayal.

He ended up doing five days of community service picking up rubbish in Chinatown in 2006. “The whole thing was a photo opportunity”, he said. “If George Michael got arrested he wouldn't do that sort of community service but with me and the clothes I wear and the way I look it made a good picture. People ask me if it was really traumatic but things can always be worse.”

Even though Boy George dropped in a reference to George Michael, he is quick to point out that he is not looking to resume the spat which started in 2005 when he accused the former Wham singer of being a hypocrite for hiding his homosexuality for so many years. This week he urged the singer to get clean of his own drug problems.

“The only reason I speak about George Michael is because people keep asking me about him. All I can say is that when you're in that state, you don't follow advice.

“With me I eventually started listening to my own voice in my head telling me that this was stupid, that I was going around in circles like it was groundhog day.”

George has to return from his current tour, which ends on November 2, to a court appearance in London on November 22.

He has pleaded not guilty to a charge of falsely imprisoning a 28-year-old man. 

“We can't even go there so don't even ask”, he said.

“There are two statements which define me. The first is that bitterness is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die. The other is “Remember you're a Womble”. To me it just means that the sort of things we think are important often really aren't. What's important to me is to be present in what I'm doing. There were years that amazing things were happening to me and I was just blase about them.”

* Boy George's next single Yes We Can is released on October 12. He will appear at the Birmingham Alexandra Theatre on October 11. For tickets see www.alexan dratheatre.org.uk or call 0844 8472388.

Time and place Boy George

The former Culture Club singer recalls the mews house in west London that he bought after his first big hit in the 1980s.

Interview by Caroline Rees / http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/buying_and_selling/article4826292.ece

Star interview: Boy George is back in town

He was lead singer of Culture Club, is also a DJ, wrote a musical, is recognised for his outrageous costumes and make-up and has had his name splashed across the media for the wrong reasons during his career. Now The Boy is Back in Town - Dorking and Croydon to be exact - with some new music and old favourites. He talks to Deborah Tucknott about his forthcoming tour, latest single, former heroin addiction and street cleaning

Boy George's life is as colourful as his costumes and make-up.

Not only is there his career - Culture Club, DJ, solo artist, fashion label B-Rude, and the musical Taboo - there is his personal life, played out like a soap opera in the media - including a former drug addiction and stint as a street cleaner in New York as community service.

But The Boy is Back in Town, goes the title of his new tour, and the singer is in top form as he chats to the guide with friendly, cheerful enthusiasm about not just the good things happening now, but, unreservedly, the bad times too.

"I'm back doing music again really. I've been doing a bit of road sweeping and other stuff," he says, candidly throwing in a reference to his community service.

"We did a tour at the beginning of the year. It was really to see if anyone wanted it - if anyone cared."

They must have done because there were few tickets left at Croydon's Fairfield, and now Boy George, or George as he is happy to be called, is kicking off the new UK tour at Dorking Halls on Wednesday (October 1), before taking it to Croydon two week's later.

So why is he choosing to play live gigs again?

"I think there is definitely a market for live work," says George, now 47.

"This is because I really feel it now - it's the right thing to do."

George considers the work of Amy Winehouse and Duffy.

"I have a place in there. It's what I do - melodic soulful stuff.

"When I returned 10/15 years ago and did my DJing I felt I didn't really have a place. It was all manufactured pop bands and kids. I felt like the older person at the disco. I felt I should be doing something else.

"It's really right for me to be doing it now."

George's gig will include new songs, solo hits and of course, those classics from his days as lead singer with Culture Club, which was responsible for spurning hits such as Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?, Church of the Poison Mind and Karma Chameleon.

And he is quite happy to play the old favourites.

"In a way I have reclaimed them," he says. "I am performing them with conviction."

George also has a new single out on Sunday October 12. Called Yes We Can it is inspired by the speeches of Barack Obama, US senator of Illinois, whose voice is sampled throughout.

He explains the song talks about the problems he has been through and also relates to singer Amy Winehouse's widely publicised problems with drugs, someone George has expressed empathy for in the media.

"It's not about Barack - it's about me, it's about the s*** I've been through.

"The first verse is more about me, the second verse is more about Amy Winehouse," he says.

"'Please forgive these crimes against myself' is about being self destructive," explains George, quoting lyrics from his single.

Now "definitely clean" of drugs, George looks back at his heroin addiction in the 1980s and once again, refers to Winehouse.

"If you look at Amy Winehouse, until she decides to stop no one else can do anything.

"I look back at family and friends being really concerned and you are blind to it.

"It's only when you get out of that it all makes sense. When you're stuck in that s*** you just don't think, you don't realise.

"The publicity around at that time was possibly the most extreme. People forget what it was like - 'Find him' - it was like it was a fox hunt.

"On the flip side there were a lot of people who supported me - I had so much love from the public."

George portrayed his rise to fame and the glamour and dark side of showbusiness in his musical Taboo which ran in London and on Broadway in 2004, and featured a score which was nominated for a Tony Award.

"It was a triumph to actually put on a musical. It ran for a year and a bit in London and was a great success," George says.

He has still been plagued with a less than positive press in recent years - including over his community service stint as a New York street cleaner in 2006, after being found guilty of wasting police time.

But he got stuck in with fulfilling his punishment.

"It really wasn't that big a deal. A lot of other people would have been brought down by that. I'm quite robust. There were a couple of moments when I was picking up chow mein when I did say to myself, 'What have I done?' I thought, 'How the hell did this happen?' But you have to put things into perspective.

"Everyone was expecting me to crack. I remember my mum saying, Just do it - get it done.'

"I was there five days - I became a bit of a veteran."

And negative media stories have still circled him last year and this year. This summer George was unable to play his US tour dates after being denied a visa to the country. A statement on his website says he had been refused permission to enter by the USA Administration because he is facing a trial in London in November. This is for a charge to which he has pleaded not guilty.

"There are other places to go, there are countries that are not so strict," says George, who has just finished a series of dates in South America.

"Actually, I lost a really good friend of mine a few days ago [in August] and they have not given a visa - that was much more hurtful.

"Kind of getting angry about it is not helpful.

"I will go to America next year."

Now George just wants to get on with making music.

"I'm 47 - I'm bored of all that - I really am bored of it," he says.

So what further plans does Boy George have for the future?

"I don't really have an agenda. I'm not trying to recreate anything - I'm just trying to be.

"I'm just doing what I feel and putting out some kind of positive out there."

Boy George brings The Boy is Back in Town to Dorking Halls on Wednesday October 1 at 8pm, as part of Mole Valley's Arts Alive festival. For tickets, priced £25, call 01306 881717 or log on to www.dorkinghalls.co.uk

He then visits Fairfield, Croydon, on Wednesday October 15 at 8pm. For tickets, priced £26, call 020 8688 92981 or log on to www.fairfield

http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/entertainment/Star-interview-Boy-George-town/article-347785-detail/article.html

Pre-Order ''Yes We Can''

You can now pre- order Yes We Can on the 7 Didital website. They have it on pre-order for only 50p. And it DOES count towards the official chart.

http://www.7digital.com/artists/boy-george/yes-we-can-2/

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