5

EXPOSED

The term ‘heroin chic’ wasn’t coined for me, but I used it often in the eighties. Lots of fashion people were taking heroin. After all, I got my first wrap of smack at a Paris fashion show so it was rife: models wanting to be thin or throw up their last meal; talented people who I knew were dying, like John Moore who made shoes and ran the ‘House of Beauty and Culture’ shop and design studio, which sold designs by Judy Blame and the ground-breaking clothes of Chris Nemeth who I was obsessed with. The artist Trojan died aged just twenty-two, which while hideously sad was not a surprise. At that point it could have been any of us – we were all out of control.

Culture Club were at the height of our fame and I was doing regular photoshoots during that period, and I got some amazing images. I was skinny and could wear almost anything, which I loved. Looking back, I probably looked awful. The photos had to be airbrushed before they were seen.

I went through a badge obsession and bought a machine to create my own badges. Judy Blame had got me hooked on badges at a photoshoot with photographer and make-up artist Paul Gobel. They carried messages like ‘I hate Jon’ and pictures of Nick Kamen, who I loved.

Culture Club’s last album, From Luxury To Heartache, which summed up the situation well, was released on April 1st, 1986. Maybe being April Fools Day was apposite. It spent a week at Number 10 then dropped to 25. In America it only got to Number 32 and Australia Number 25. It was a comedown from selling millions so we were delighted when ‘Move Away’, a single from the album, reached Number 7 in the charts after its release in July.

But by now the Fleet Street sniffer hounds were after me and it was only a matter of time before they caught their prey. There was a rumoured £50,000 bounty on my head.

The first stories about band battles appeared early in the year. The News of the World quoted Jon saying, ‘George isn’t quite himself at the moment.’ The first story mentioning drugs appeared in the Daily Mirror with the headline ‘What’s the trouble with Boy?’ It talked about my dramatic mood swings and erratic behaviour in shops. Laughably, Marilyn told the Mirror, ‘I’m going out to LA to help a friend who has a problem. I think I can help him.’

We were booked onto Top of the Pops to perform ‘Move Away’, which almost ended in disaster when I refused to leave my dressing room. The band had hoped that having a hit would be like showbiz smelling salts. But we nearly lost the slot and risked being banned for life.

The News of the World tracked down Alice who said I had taken her virginity. If I had, I had no memory of it. Journalist Jonathan Ashby – who had smoked copious amounts of weed with me when he tracked me down in Holland – attempted to befriend me and set up an interview with Alice for the Daily Mirror under the ruse it would be about our romance, though in reality he was after the drugs story. He didn’t get what he wanted.

Even journalist Fiona Russell Powell, who I regarded as a vague friend though I kept my distance from her, interviewed me for The Face. She attempted to get the drugs story out of me too. What about her own story? We both auditioned to host The Tube TV show on the same day in 1982. Obviously neither of us got the gig. She looked amazing, though, and they were obviously looking for a quirky blonde, but this one was maybe too quirky.

From Luxury’s brief stint in the charts was not going to recoup the £500,000 recording costs. The boys met with our manager, Tony and agreed to shelve plans for a forthcoming tour and put the band on hold until after I’d received treatment.

On April 9th, 1986, a story by Jonathan Ashby appeared in the Evening Standard with the headline ‘Worried About The Boy’. It didn’t explicitly mention drugs and relied on gossip about me appearing to drift off to sleep during a TV interview, spending days in the bath and looking grey without make-up. As soon as the paper appeared, a News of the World journalist was on my doorstep. I was a mess and furious about the article so accepted her lift to go to Fleet Street so I could hit someone. My co-writer on this book, Spencer Bright, was the stooge sent out to deal with me. His advice was to go back home before I embarrassed myself further. Thank God he was there, and he was right.

It was around this time that Marilyn had one of his comeback shows at the Hippodrome. He was delighted to have pocketed £5,000 and said, ‘Let’s get the first plane to Jamaica. We’re a mess.’ He thought the tropics would help us kick the habit. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy, and didn’t want to stop, but agreed to go. I informed my drug dealer we were going, and she said she and her boyfriend had planned a visit to Jamaica themselves to visit his relatives, and wouldn’t it be great if we were all there together.

For the first three days, Marilyn and I sat by the pool. Paradise, apparently. I had my DF118 painkillers but was restless and couldn’t wait for the dealer to arrive. I hadn’t told Marilyn, who was unsurprisingly disappointed when they turned up. Predictably, drug-fuelled mayhem ensued.

While there, I received a letter from Richard Branson, which said it was becoming plain to everyone I had a problem and pleaded to let them help me do something about it. I just thought Branson was interfering and tossed the letter in the bin. I couldn’t see it for the genuine offer it was. I was too far gone.

But when we were home we became even more reckless, taking huge amounts of drugs; freebasing cocaine and then using heroin to bring us down. Marilyn realised it could be the death of us and said we needed another holiday to get over Jamaica. I felt like shit so my travel agent in LA booked us onto a ten-day cruise round the Caribbean from Puerto Rico. On the ship I had a stash of some prescription drugs from a dodgy doctor in London to help with my planned detox, but I soon ran out. We befriended the nurse in the hope that she would prescribe some tranquilisers, but she couldn’t help us. After mostly sleeping and throwing up for a few days, we decided after just four stops to get off at Guadeloupe. We left with only hand luggage, arranging for our cases to be sent on to New York.

As we walked through a colourful food market, people pointed and laughed at us while we searched for a quick way back to New York. We must have looked nuts as we asked strangers where the airport was. But when we finally found it, there were only flights to Paris. I phoned a dealer friend in New York, pressuring them to get on a plane with heroin and to meet me there. Wandering around the airport we eventually found out there was a private airfield nearby where we could get a plane to Antigua, which had direct flights to New York. In the spiteful heat, Marilyn and I dragged ourselves the half-mile to the airfield and an hour later – and $300 lighter – we were triumphantly on our way to Antigua in a tiny plane. As we landed, I spotted an American Airlines jet about to take off. We jumped over a barrier and ran towards the plane waving and shouting ‘STOP!’ as they pulled away the stairs. Armed guards shouted at us to stop. We could have been shot but we were so desperate to get back to New York to get heroin. We were escorted back into the terminal to get our tickets while they agreed to hold up the plane. Looking back, it’s utter madness.

I tried to ring my friend heading to Paris from the plane’s credit-card phone but it didn’t work. As soon as we reached JFK I ran to the information desk and found out an Air France plane was due to leave for Paris from another terminal. So, sweating and panting, Marilyn and I ran there and found my friend at the gate just as she was about to board. She was incredulous, wondering what the hell was going on after expecting to meet us in Paris. We didn’t care – all we cared about was getting our hit. Minutes later, Marilyn and I were in the men’s toilets. A wave of relief came over me as I took a huge line of smack. Suddenly nothing in the world mattered and we were laughing about our adventure and wondering if we would ever see our luggage again.

The dealer followed me to New York, where she was staying with friends, and charged me $500 for a gram of heroin. I don’t remember much about those few weeks except that there were massive fights and arguments. I was wasting away and would just wander the streets of New York late at night, drifting till daylight as New York came alive and I withered away.

One morning, I tried to get out of bed and was involuntarily thrown across the room from a convulsion. It was twenty minutes before I realised where I was. I knew that it was time to head back to London.

At Heathrow, the press were there to greet me. How they knew I’d be there, I’m not sure. I told the reporter for the Daily Mail I’d had amoebic dysentery and this was the reason I’d lost two stone. I denied being a heroin addict.

‘I’m not guilty . . . I’ve always tried to tell kids to stay off drugs. I’ve never taken them myself but people think I’ve been going round taking everything in sight. It’s not true and it never will be true.’

The next morning, I went to my dealer and a few days later was back in America promoting From Luxury To Heartache, convincing myself everything was normal and I was fine. Once back in London, Mum turned up at the house and tried to reason with me and we cried together. I talked her round and said I had it under control. Even if she didn’t believe me, what could she do?

‘Why do you need that stuff?’ she kept asking. ‘I thought you had your head screwed on.’

She blamed all the people around me, but it was down to me. I had money and I was paying for the drugs. I had methadone from the doctor to deal with any withdrawals and I chose to use it to balance myself if I ran out of heroin. Using methadone and various pills, I managed to appear normal for days, but I was always drawn back to the dealer to get more heroin. If I wasn’t using with Marilyn, I went to find Steve Strange and spent a few days at his flat. One day, he pinched my credit card and tried to go shopping. I was furious when I found out because the shop confiscated my Amex card and he ran off. He denied it. So I had badges made that read: ‘American Express, Steve Strange never leaves my house without it.’

Mikey and Roy apparently even discussed a kidnap plan for me with Dad, who wanted to tie me up and take me to the Irish countryside. All sorts of mad plots were being discussed. Friends joked with me about spilling my story and splitting the takings and, in the end, it was someone I regarded as a friend who became my Judas.

Photographer David Levine had shot the cover for ‘Karma Chameleon’ and was the brother of our producer, Steve Levine (who was mortified by his brother’s betrayal). David had been booked for a session with us for American music magazine Spin. I forgot to turn up to a few sessions, and when I did, I was out of it and belligerent.

He kept asking my make-up artist to ask me to get him cocaine as he was tired and needed a pick-me-up. I can only presume he was too nervous to ask himself but it was clearly becoming annoying so I finally agreed and got a friend to deliver two packets of cocaine to the studio, one for him and one that I kept for myself.

I went out clubbing that evening and at 7am was listening to music with my friend Hippie Richard in my house in St John’s Wood when the doorbell rang. I thought it was a neighbour complaining, and shouted through the door, ‘Who is it?’

‘We’re reporters from the Daily Mirror. Can we speak to you about some allegations that have been made against you?’

They said David Levine told them I sold him cocaine. I laughed and shook my head and said, ‘I don’t believe it.’

The phone didn’t stop ringing, with calls from Tony Gordon and my press officer, Elly Smith at Virgin, among a lot of hacks too. That night I went out, defying impending disaster, and picked up the first early-morning edition of the Daily Mirror at the newspaper stand in Leicester Square. The headline was ‘Drugs and Boy George’.

David presented himself as a concerned friend, worried I was destroying myself with drugs. I ran home and was besieged by press all day but hid behind closed blinds.

Stupidly, on reflection, I couldn’t resist calling Levine a few days later. He didn’t pick up so I left a message saying he was going to be dead if I got my hands on him. Naturally enough, the Daily Mirror then printed a story with the headline: ‘You’re Gonna Be Dead.’

It didn’t stop me, though. I was brazen, only changing how I carried my drugs, making sure I could throw them away if I had to. I carried on clubbing, smoking a joint as I went into the Wag and grabbing it back from a security guard who nabbed it off me.

The worst public catastrophe was my appearance at an anti-apartheid rally on Clapham Common. I was off my nut long before I arrived and channelling Bob Dylan, with a big red, gold and green Rasta hat and my face plastered with a quick-drying face mask. I forgot my usual make-up and hid behind John Lennon-esque-mirrored sunglasses. My grubby white jean jacket read ‘Heroin Free Zone’ and ‘Suck My Nob’. I was dishevelled and all over the place, mumbling and not making any sense. I don’t know how I sang ‘Black Money’ and ‘Melting Pot’ with Helen on backing but I did, and the audience gasped. I was rake-thin and clearly smacked out of my brains.

Backstage the other artists tried to avoid me as I scratched my face and smoked one cigarette after another. Sting, Sade and Peter Gabriel were there. There was no hiding my problem, which had been discussed on Fleet Street for the past few months. After the gig I was smuggled out and went back to St John’s Wood to hide and take more drugs. My appearance even made News at Ten, apparently.

My family were at their wits end and Dad started playing detective, surveilling St John’s Wood round the clock. He and Mum were convinced Hippie Richard was the villain, but no one was forcing me to take drugs. He cornered Richard at my house in Hampstead and got him to hand over my keys.

When I heard Dad’s voice, I locked myself in the bathroom and ordered him out of the house. He said I was killing myself.

‘If I want to kill myself, it has fuck all to do with you,’ I replied.

He said he was going to set fire to the house and we could die together. When I opened the bathroom door, I could smell smoke. I ran downstairs to see he’d set fire to a pile of clothes on the living-room floor. I screamed at him to get out.

In my panic I phoned Jon. He arrived to find the police there too. Dad had called them saying I had set fire to the flat. Two policemen came into the house and saw the smouldering clothes. Dad was hoping they would arrest me but no crime had been committed. Jon and I hugged. None of us understood what was happening. When Jon left he nearly came to blows with Dad, who accused him of supplying me with drugs. It was a messy scene.

Mum was furious with Dad. Despite his protestations to the contrary, she knew what he had done. She came with Bonnie to clear up the mess while Dad sat outside in the car. I told her to keep him away from me.

On the way back to Shooters Hill, Dad was raving people were trying to kill me. Mum went to bed exhausted while he was up all night. My brother, David, found him in the morning huddled up on the settee, crying like a baby. My other brother, David, was a freelance photographer supplying Fleet Street and the pop mags with pictures and had good contacts. Dad pleaded with him to go to the newspapers and tell them everything. He resisted but Dad was hysterical and said I’d tried to set fire to the house and was a danger to myself.

So, back at his studio, David called Nick Ferrarri, his contact on the Sun. Ferrari screeched down to David’s studio in Greenwich and asked how much he wanted but David didn’t want to be paid. He just wanted to help.

On July 3rd, 1986, the story appeared: ‘Junkie George Has 8 Weeks To Live.’ I had an £800-a-day habit, which would have meant I had just seconds to live.

I’d been trying to make sense of the last few hours and was listening to ‘Morning Has Broken’ by Cat Stevens when the door went.

‘Who is it?’

‘Boy George. I’m from the Associated Press. Would you like to comment on the story in today’s paper?’

Obviously, I told them to fuck off and turned up the music. I peeked out the window and saw a massive media army outside, which I did my best to ignore.

I sent Hippie Richard to get the paper. I felt betrayed, what else could I feel? Angrily, I rang my brother. ‘You cunt, I knew one day you’d take the pay-off, arsehole, selfish cunt.’

Just then, Philip rang with the news a friend of ours was in a coma after a drugs overdose. Perfect timing. On hearing what was happening, he advised me that if I was going to talk to the press I should dress up. I took his bad advice and foolishly denied the story to ITN.

During all the heroin madness, I had started seeing an Irish boy called Michael Dunne. He was living with my friend, Tony Vickers, close by in Hampstead and we started dating. It was probably the worst time to start a relationship, but he was gorgeous, with huge lips and Irish eyes. He was a beautiful distraction. He was a pot smoker when we met but eventually got involved in it all. He is still handsome these days and we are great friends. Better friends then we were lovers, for sure.

It was Michael who got the surprise call from Richard Branson, who said he was home with David Bowie and that I should come over. Branson knew what was going on; he’d tried to help all those months earlier when I was in Jamaica. He obviously thought the lure of Bowie would help get an audience. I was tempted – I knew David had used drugs – but I didn’t fancy a lecture from my hero so I agreed to visit Richard at his office on a barge the following day.

In the morning, we met Richard and he suggested I try a ‘Black Box’ treatment pioneered by Dr Meg Patterson and drove me over to see her in Willesden. The invention looked like the Jewish tefillin placed on the arm and forehead in prayer, and was about as useful to me. It was based on acupuncture but, instead of needles, sent an electric current to electrodes on pressure points. It was supposed to make withdrawal from heroin easier. So, from Meg’s office we went to Mill End House, Richard’s home in Oxfordshire, and started the treatment. But it was ineffective. I went through all the usual symptoms of withdrawal over the days I was there, and tossed and turned in sweaty agony. I agreed to just use this contraption without medicine, but it was a mistake.

It was while I was there that the press coverage became hysterical. The Daily Mirror asked, ‘Boy George is a junkie. What are the police doing about it?’ Politicians waded in and the Home Office put pressure on the police.

On Tuesday, July 8th, at 7am, Operation Culture went into action. The police raided my home in St John’s Wood – where my American friend, Bonnie, was sleeping – and my new home in Hampstead, where they arrested my brother, Kevin. They also picked up my dealer and her boyfriend, two other friends and Jon Moss.

They wrongly thought Jon was part of my drug circle but that didn’t stop them charging him when they found cocaine at his home. Everyone was put in separate cells. The police wanted to know where I was.

I watched it all on TV, weeping and feeling helpless. The police said they wanted to talk to me. Richard and Dr Meg conferred and agreed it would be best to speak to the police. He told them I was undergoing treatment, refusing to say where, and asked that I be allowed to complete a month’s treatment before any interviews took place.

Branson issued a statement at the request of the police. But once the press knew of his involvement, they started stalking his properties. Tony was furious that he’d not been kept informed and, after his repeated insistence on knowing where I was, Branson gave in. Tony’s gold Rolls-Royce parked outside Mill End House gave the press a fresh scent. I could sense their presence. The papers were full of my fall from grace. I scribbled a message on a piece of card:

‘Moral Majority. Have you come to return my grace?’

I sellotaped it to a window near the front of the house in the hope it would be seen alongside deeper stuff like ‘Fuck off’ and ‘Thanks for caring’.

Tony decided it would be best to move me to a safer place and one evening we all crept out the back of Branson’s house, walking across the fields into a nearby church graveyard. Branson piggybacked Meg through the long grass. It was all very surreal. A car was waiting to drive us to Roy and Alison’s house in Billericay, Essex.

The police reneged on their promise to leave me alone while I got treatment. Branson was threatened with arrest if he didn’t comply, despite his and Meg’s protestations that they were setting an appalling precedent and no addict would put themselves forward for treatment if they knew they might be arrested. My solicitor, John Cohen, met with the police and told them I was not fit to be questioned but they said they had no choice. Eight questions had been tabled in the House of Commons and the Home Secretary was now involved.

Tony phoned to say I was going to be arrested. I was more angry than sad. It was a lot of fuss over one small person, which was how I felt: small and insignificant. I didn’t believe all the crap about the House of Commons. They just wanted my scalp to set an example.

In the morning, I was formally arrested and taken to Harrow police station instead of Paddington Green – where the main investigation was taking place – so as to be out of sight from the press. I was locked in a cell for an hour, starting to shake and feel nauseous, and then seen by a police doctor who deemed me well enough to be questioned. The questioning went on for two and a half hours. When they were finished, they locked me up again for a couple of hours. When they presented evidence to me that my dealer’s boyfriend had implicated me, I fell into their trap and admitted using heroin, even though my lawyer had advised me to admit nothing.

I had never been arrested with any drugs but they decided to charge me with past possession – which does not exist as a criminal charge – as no drugs were ever found on me. Of course, it was a special celebrity charge. A once-in-a-lifetime Boy George opportunity and I agreed to it.

I appeared at Marylebone Magistrates Court on July 29th on what I felt were these trumped-up charges and fined £250 for possession of heroin. I was high on methadone and brazenly carrying a hash joint in my pocket.

Marilyn was arrested but no charges were brought because, evidently, in the real world you can’t charge someone on press rumours. I laughed when I saw Marilyn poke his tongue out on the news. My brother, Kevin ended up spending a few hours in the cells, and Michael too. Michael and I stayed together for eleven years after that, but in the end we had such separate lives. We are great friends now though and I love him like a brother.