Oh, Boy! Look what's become of George

For most of us, a leopard skin hat might be considered a trifle ostentatious for everyday wear.

But on Boy George it borders on being understated. Here after all is a man with a sartorial track record that puts Elton John to shame.

This is the new Boy George, though, paying a flying visit to West Yorkshire to plug his new show on the Leeds-based radio station Galaxy 105.

It's nearly 16 years since Culture Club first topped the charts with Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?, fronted by the androgynous George O'Dowd, complete with dreadlocks and make-up.

Now 37, he has reinvented himself as a DJ who is much sought-after on the clubbing scene.

Ironically, according to George, the current boom in dance music owes much to the same era which also paved the way for ground-breaking bands like Culture Club.

"I put a lot of it down to punk rock. I think punk rock changed our culture for good and for bad. It broke down a lot of these industry barriers," he said. "Suddenly, you didn't have to spend 12 years on the road. All you had to do was have a good heart and a few good ideas thanks to the whole technology."

That DIY ethic continues today with the use of synthesisers, samplers and other gadgets which mean you don't necessarily have to go into an expensive recording studio.

"People can make a record upstairs in their bedroom in Bradford while their mums are downstairs cooking the dinner," said George. "With punk, people started to wear make-up and unusual clothes so it was a lot of other things as well.

"If I look back to when I was a teenager, the idea of a man using make-up was unheard of, but some of the things I got beaten up for when I was 16 are considered quite normal now. I remember having shavings in my hair. Dance culture has been responsible for breaking down a lot of sexual and cultural barriers."

There's something very British about Boy George. No wonder, then, that he sounds so fond of a country that has had an on-and-off love affair with him for so many years.

"If you travel around the world there's nowhere quite like this country," he said. "It's something to do with the fact that if an idea happens it travels around the country quite quickly. In America, every state is like a country.

"There's a real tribal mentality in this country. If you think about it, Northern Soul happened exclusively in Wigan."

As a DJ, George is now beginning to spread his wings beyond these shores, with Ireland one of his favourite new haunts.

"Up until about a year and a half ago people just weren't dancing in Dublin. They were just too drunk by six o' clock to be bothered to dance. But it's almost like an early rave culture now," he said.

But it's impossible to talk to George without mentioning Culture Club, the band that catapulted him to stardom in the first place. Although he has had a frosty relationship with the group's drummer Jon Moss, he is still on friendly terms with guitarist and keyboard player Roy Hay and bassist Mikey Craig. So is it true that a reunion is on the cards?

"We're talking about it. We're definitely doing a VH1 special called Story Tellers and you do an unplugged thing as part of that. After that is undecided as yet.

"I've always been friends with Roy and Mikey. I haven't spoken to Jon for three years."

Despite his well-publicised drug problems that nearly ruined him, George is still an icon, even to people too young to remember his original rise to fame in the early 1980s. And he enjoys the continuing adulation.

"Kids of 15 or 16 come up to me and say 'My mum loves you.' A lot of these kids weren't even born when Culture Club started but they have some association with me through their parents and through older people," he said. "But I don't think I have the same kind of hunger as I had when I was 21 to be screamed at and followed everywhere I go."

For all that Boy George now appears to have a cosy niche in the music industry, he is adamant that he is not an accepted figure or part of the establishment.

"I don't think I will ever become established, even though to a lot of people I am established, because there are various things in the way of that," he said.

"When I was in Culture Club I never really thought I was part of the music industry. We were never mates with Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran. They were singing about stuff like drinking champagne whereas we were singing about real life."

Establishment figure or not, bosses at Leeds-based radio station Galaxy 105 - recently relaunched after starting life as Kiss - were delighted to secure George's services for what is his first regular radio slot.

He has done occasional shows in the past which George readily admits established his reputation for playing a highly eclectic selection of music.

"What I'm doing now is much more stylised but it's still a variety of different types of music," he said.

"What we play is a mixture. We do want to play some things that people want to know and you maybe slip in new tunes that maybe wouldn't normally get played."

This sounds like a new chapter, then, for George O'Dowd. And after the best part of two decades in the limelight, he is not particularly tempted by the idea of taking it easy.

"I do think about hanging up my hat and think 'Wouldn't it be nice to retire?' But I like working," he said.

That leopard skin headgear appears to be staying firmly put for the time being.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.