'Adversity can be good for you'

Boy George: facing drug charges in New York

11 April 2012

I have so been looking forward to meeting Boy George. Not only can we reminisce about his 1983 birthday party (where I was chatted up by a member of Spandau Ballet), but it should be a week of triumph for him - back in London, presenting an award at the Brits and being given a coveted slot at London Fashion Week to promote his new range of clothing BRude.

Instead, he is once again facing persistent questions about his drug use. In just over two weeks' time, he is due in court again in New York over charges of possessing cocaine, after police allegedly found 13 bags of the drug in his Manhattan apartment. And if he thought he could leave this controversy behind, it quickly became apparent that he could not.

First there was Chris Evans making pointed drugs jokes at his expense at the Brits. Then, more damagingly, his former agent Andria Law yesterday begged George to get help. "He's in a dark place at the moment, not wanting to admit the state he's in," Law, who worked with George for 20 years, is quoted as saying. "We are deeply worried about him." Law and a fellow agent, who were both sacked by George in November, claim that George is now a recluse who spends most of his time surfing the internet and snorting coke. They allege his current addiction started in 2002 after being prescribed sleeping pills, and now when he is in New York clubs, "he would walk up to anyone and everyone and ask if they had drugs. He didn't give a damn".

George agrees to meet me during London Fashion Week for a rare interview - his first since the Manhattan drugs case erupted. We are due to meet late afternoon in Cicada on St John Street in Clerkenwell. He finally turns up, more than an hour late, in a dark-grey overcoat with a shaven head. I wonder aloud if he is late because he has been making last-minute adjustments to his new fashion collection. "No," he says, "I've just woken up."

His face is bare of make-up, bar two carefully drawn eyebrows. I tell him he looks really well, all things considered. He was recently spotted sobbing on a New York park bench, a bald, bloated has-been, on his release after eight hours in a Manhattan police cell. Late one night last October, he called the NYPD, saying his apartment in Little Italy was being burgled. But when they got there at 3.48am, it is alleged they found no evidence of a break-in, merely the cocaine. George reportedly answered the door saying "What's up?", not remembering he had dialled 911, and was said to be in "a drugged stupor". (He has admitted he was addicted to heroin and cocaine back in 1986, but went into rehab because he had seen "too many friends" die from addiction.)

He pleaded not guilty at Manhattan Criminal Court a couple of weeks ago. "I really can't talk about all that," he says. "But I can tell you that the case against me is collapsing." (He remained stony-faced last week when Chris Evans asked him at the Brits if it was true that the drugs had been found under his bed. "I think that might have been you Chris," George snapped back.)

He does, though, want to talk about his new range of clothing. The fact that he was invited by the British Fashion Council to close London Fashion Week on Saturday with the launch of his BRude range of men's and women's clothing caused a stir. "We had to audition," he mutters. It confirmed to many how half-hearted the industry is about distancing itself from drugs, particularly given how briefly Kate Moss was ostracised.

But George is not bothered; he is enjoying being back in London. How hands-on are you in the design process? I ask him. "Completely. People might not think the clothes are handmade, but they are. I have tried to inject the designs with humour, but some of it is quite wearable. I am inspired by punk, by ideas of rebellion. I hate the way camp vanity has been hijacked by straight men, and that gay men are desperate to wear Hackett."

But why become a designer, and why now? "I used to work in a boutique," he says, of the days in the late Seventies. "I had my own clothes shop on Carnaby Street, even before I was with Culture Club, called the Foundry, where we would sell all the clothes that we wore, so life has come full circle."

His favourite designers are Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano. Galliano is "an absolute genius. He is not frightened of being ridiculed. From Ziggy Stardust to me, we were all ridiculed. The first thing ever written about me in the press was when I was called Wally of the Week. People used to cross the street when they saw me; when I became famous they wanted to be my friend. First it was, 'Freak!' and then it was, 'Oh, hi!'"

I ask him whether he is less angry these days. He is the son of an Irish builder, Jeremiah O'Dowd, who died of a heart attack in 2004, and Dinah, who is in her sixties, still living in a terraced house in south London. She is close to George and when approached after his arrest said: "I am a sick woman and have nothing to say." George did upset her when he turned down his MBE. She called him spiteful. He said: "Too bad you didn't give birth to Cliff Richard."

George endured a "macho, volatile" upbringing, as one of six children (in 1995 his brother Gerald, a schizophrenic, was committed to a psychiatric hospital for the manslaughter of his wife, Gillian). To his father's credit, though, he accepted George's homosexuality and flamboyant lifestyle; his parents would visit his squat to fill the cupboards with food, and his dad even wrote a cheque so that George could buy red tartan bondage trousers from Westwood's shop, Seditionaries.

Talk to him today about the Eighties however, and he doesn't want to hear. "Why are you obsessed with the past? This is my heyday. I am not interested in nostalgia. I think the Eighties were actually quite conformist. Even I conformed, because I was denying I was gay."

It's not that Boy George is ashamed of the period when he fronted Culture Club and had 21 UK Top 50 singles, it's just that "there are as many good things - clubs, bands - happening now in London as there were back then. I'm no longer young, but I'm not struggling against it. I think now I am older [he is 44] and more comfortable with my sexuality and who I am, I am far less apologetic than I ever was."

Apologetic? He has always had one of the sharpest tongues in pop music. Madonna is "a living, breathing cash register". He almost gags when I mention the name Marilyn (a one-hit wonder, "a pretty, pig-faced creature", who used to share a squat with George in Shooter's Hill); the only person he has a good word to say about is Helen Terry, his former backing singer. He dislikes George Michael, and wishes Will Young "would go back in the closet. He is a common or garden homosexual, he is NOT a queer."

George has very distinct ideas about whether people are the proper kind of gay. George Michael is the wrong kind, according to George, for being caught in a California loo and thus enforcing the reputation that gays are "rampant". He remains furious that Elton John performed with homophobic Eminem in 2002 at the MTV awards.

I tell George that the British public - even if they did get sick to death of Karma Chameleon - have always taken him to their hearts, that we all bought his records knowing he was gay. He disagrees.

"We live in a culture that pretends to accept and understand, but which doesn't want to deal with the finer details of gay culture. Just because you have a few queers in Emmerdale, there is this myth that the world has become more tolerant. It doesn't understand us at all. I have asked a lot of straight men about Brokeback Mountain and they said they couldn't relate to it."

I tell him I related to it. I sobbed. "But you are a woman. You have a female sensibility, just like I do. I cried at the trailer. I was like, 'Oh my God, that is my life!' It deals with intimacy, which is far more shocking than sex." So was he only able to get away with wearing his full regalia on the train from Woolwich because he was a big bloke, not because people accepted him? He shrugs. "I don't need anyone's permission to be who I am, and I don't want to be accepted. That would equal the end, really. I love being queer."

He says he would never enter into a civil partnership: "Gay unions, what is that about? I haven't been invited to any ceremonies, and I wouldn't go anyway. The idea that gay people have to mimic what obviously doesn't work for straight people any more ... I think is a bit tragic. I am looking-forward to gay divorces." He does have a good word for rapper Kanye West, who has just won a Brit. "I was pleased because he is the first American rapper to say something positive about gay people. I met his mum, she's lovely."

He says he has always been drawn to things that are quite homophobic, like reggae and ragga music. "What is that Morrissey song? The more you ignore me, the closer I get ... that sums me up. I am antagonistic. If I hear a ragga song about burning and shooting gay people, I will stand up and say something."

So is he in love? He laughs. "I am dating an entire football team!" he says, trying to shock, but I tell him he's said that before. Does he pick men who are bound to disappoint? [Punk god Kirk Brandon tried to sue him when their relationship was revealed in George's 1995 autobiography, Take it Like a Man, and Culture Club drummer Jon Moss is now married with children].

"I always fell for straight boys," he says. "The more macho the better." He tells me he hates hypocrisy, would never do Celebrity Fit club or Celebrity Big Brother. He does stick to his principles - he is still, after his brush with India and Hare Krishna, a vegetarian, and doesn't like alcohol. "I would never use fur in my designs," he says. "Fake fur, definitely. Don't get me wrong, though, I think Pete Burns [whose fur coat was confiscated during Celebrity Big Brother] looks great."

But there is still the drugs question. He denies that he is back on drugs. According to his American lawyer, he is "going to fight [the court case] all the way". Are you nervous about returning to face the music next month, I ask? After all, he could be barred from living in the US (he moved there when he took his musical, Taboo, to New York for a short-lived run on Broadway) or, worse, face 15 years in prison.

"I'm not worried at all," he says. "I will possibly go back in March, hopefully later. Adversity can be good for you."

A London B-Rude store will open in the spring.

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