Boy George: A life less ordinary

It's been a big week for Boy George. It began at a celebrity auction at the Café de Paris in aid of the Hoping Foundation - Kate Moss dug deep to hear him sing 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me'. Her winning bid: £20,000. 'Mad, I know,' George laughs his throaty laugh. 'Bless her heart. I've known Kate since she was 14. I was out in the West End with [the DJ] Jeremy Healy. He spotted Kate, and was like, "Oh my God, she's beautiful." I was like, "She's a child!" We took her to Ministry.' And, as with Naomi Campbell - who used to sit on his doorstep as a schoolgirl fan - and so many of London's most fine and fabulous, there began a lifelong friendship.

'I was surprised Kate went that far [with the bidding]. But it was for a really good cause,' he says of the event that raised £393,000 to help children in Palestinian refugee camps. He had given organisers a list of three songs that he
was prepared to sing: 'And I was planning to do 'Karma Chameleon' with Kate, but it didn't happen. She's a lovely kid. I like calling her a kid because,' he chuckles, 'I'm an old 'un now.'

If pop years are like dog years, a speeded-up version of 'normal' human life, then 50-year-old George should by rights be a knackered old pooch. He's enjoyed giddy highs: a huge 1982 hit on both sides of the Atlantic with Culture Club's 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me', career album sales of 50 million, and a successful post-band life as a solo artist, DJ, fashion designer and record-label owner. But this style and sexuality trailblazer has also weathered punishing lows: drug addiction, court cases, arrests on both sides of the Atlantic, incarceration.

After being handed a 15-month jail sentence in 2009 for imprisoning a male escort, it looked like Boy George was finished. However, as we meet in the basement of the Hampstead High Street Starbucks, just around the corner from his home of 19 years, it's clear that the man in front of me is relishing a middle-age bounceback. Meet the new! Improved! Rebranded! Detoxed! Boy George. Two years since his spell in chokey, and in advance of Culture Club's 30th anniversary tour and album next year, he ebulliently and repeatedly insists he's a reformed character: sober, less judgmental, less bitchy, more serene.

As he talks about Kate he laughs with a gutsy chuckle, its tarry qualities belying the fact that George is five months clear of the fags, and its belly-laugh volume contrary to the fact that George now has a lot less belly (through training and diet he's shed four stone this year). Swaddled in all-black civvies - Bathing Ape baseball cap, hoodie, relaxed trousers - he looks well on it.

Later George is off to the Royal Albert Hall to sound-check for the Prince's Trust Rock Gala 2011. It follows the week's other George-shaped headline: that he was offered £750,000 to appear on the next season of Celebrity Big Brother. But George refused the offer, demanding £1 million. 'There's no way you could do a show like that unless you got paid £1 million. They've asked me every year for years. Anyway, I'm going on tour with Culture Club, which is gonna be a lot more fun.'

He may have lost the weight, but he's kept every ounce of his gossipy wit and knack for an acerbic put-down. When talk turns to The X Factor, the man whose Twitter tag says 'I'm Catholic in my complications, Buddhist in my aspirations', can't help himself. 'They all think their farts don't smell, don't they?' he airily declares of the judges. That said, he doesn't seem to mind most of them, apart from Louis Walsh. 'I hate that man. Vile.' What's Lil Louis done to George? 'He's just a horrible man. He knows I hate him. The feeling is mutual. He knows nothing about music. We all hate him in my family. Especially my mum.' He's on a ranting roll now, one of the many qualities for which people have loved George for yonks. 'The nature of that show is that they blow loads of smoke up people's arses before they're ready for it: "You're amazing! You're a pop star!" And the other thing that really gets on my tits is all this "It's my dream! My life's over!" You're 20 years old, get over your-self. It's fine. Look at me. People come back'

Was Frankie Cocozza penalised for acting like a rock star? 'Well, I had a friend who was on The X Factor, Drew Jameson. He might kill me for saying this, but they play a lot of psychological games [backstage] all the time. So they encourage it. And I've heard some real horror stories. So my attitude is: that's a kid. That's a kid that you're shoving - you're not even giving him a chance to get used to it - you're just saying, "Here you are, have some more smoke up your arse," and then having a go at him because he's lost control.'

The days of George losing control, however, are seemingly over. The only thing he's high on now is chutzpah, and the double espresso he chugs during our interview. As if to cement this transition comes a coffee-table book, King of Queens. In pictures and (a few) words, we see George's journey from South London son of Irish immigrants to trailblazing punk-meets-New Romantic character in London's late-1970s/early-1980s nightlife demimonde. From Top of the Pops to the mean streets of New York - sweeping them, in fact, after his 2005 drug bust. As it says in the book, he's 'a man with four convictions and not proud of it'.

King of Queens also gives George the opportunity to pay homage to his dearest and (one-time) bitterest rivals. There's Steve Strange, ace-face on the London club scene and frontman with Visage: 'We were always falling out - I'd get more attention than him and he'd hate it. Then he became famous first - I hated that!' And there's Philip Sallon, the socialite and club promoter who was beaten unconscious in a homophobic attack in Piccadilly Circus earlier this year (he's well on the mend, reports George). George was 16 and with his girlfriend Laura - yes, he's experimented - when he first met 26-year-old Sallon. George and Laura were standing outside the Lyceum, disconsolate at having been refused entry to the 'disco' on account of their punk clobber. 'And this queen minced by with a mohair jumper and skintight satin trousers, an asymmetrical wedge hairdo and a feather earring - he looked amazing. He said, "Come to Bangs!" ' George duly trooped to the Tottenham Court Road club, 'and my life changed. Ah, G.A.Y.! One of the first people I saw in the queue was Soo Catwoman, the first famous person I ever saw.'

George wears his heart on his sleeve - 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me' was famously about his secret, tortured love affair with Culture Club's 'straight' drummer Jon Moss - and his art on his arms: he rolls up a sleeve to reveal punk Soo Catwoman's face tattooed on his beefy forearm. Leigh Bowery is also on there, and Marc Bolan is a work-in-progress. Siouxsie Sioux, another lifelong idol, might also make it on to this fleshy honour roll. It's a lot of faces, but George has a lot of passions. And big arms.

Returning to the book, George flips to a page featuring a skinny 19-year-old poseur giving good face in a squat in Carburton Street, W1. Judging by the pictures on his wall, teenage George loved Marlene Dietrich and, er, himself. 'The best thing in that picture is (above, far left) that Theatre of Hate T-shirt I'm wearing, which
I designed.' Designed the T-shirt, bought the T-shirt - and dated the lead singer. Kirk Brandon was one of George's early paramours; Brandon sued George for writing about the relationship in his 1995 autobiography Take It Like A Man (Brandon lost).