AT HER MAJESTY’S (DIS)PLEASURE
Nothing on this earth can prepare you for the news you are going to prison. Even the handful of Valium that I stole from Alison Hay who was my house guest at that moment. I necked it before going into the glass box in court and had to listen to a rundown of events that I did not remember.
At this point, what does it really matter what happened? His version of events and mine have never matched up. He said in court, on oath, that I attacked him because he wouldn’t sleep with me. I have always said that I had paid for his company, but he wasn’t my type and I did not find him attractive. I had hired him to model for some pictures and he looked better from behind. He was bitchy about my weight in court.
As I told the police, I pushed him onto the bed and handcuffed him because he wouldn’t leave. I don’t know what I was thinking, I wasn’t in my right mind, but I know that’s all I did. It was stupid, aggressive and regrettable but it was less than 30 seconds before he pulled himself free and ran out of the flat and down Ravey Street in his white vest and underwear. What he told police is now in the ether and it was printed in newspapers and is regarded as fact. He hates me, but I beg him to get on with his life. I was wrong and I am sorry but, at some point, I must move on. So, I move on now. I’m not an evil queen just an idiot who did too many drugs and made a massive mistake.
As I told police, I did not beat anyone with a chain and there were no radiators in Ravey Street. Well, only tiny ones close to the floor, and I did not handcuff Toulouse-Lautrec. Once I admitted handcuffing him, I was guilty of assault. The police had no choice but to charge me.
The day I went for sentencing, in January 2009, I went through a surreal moment of surrender. Going from the cell to the van was like being in a seventies movie. I had watched it hundreds of times and now it was happening to me. I was taken to Pentonville. They looked up my arse and sent me to a shared cell. The dreadlocked guy I was holed up with seemed quite pleasant and within about thirty minutes of being there I was offered every drug on the planet. I made the smart decision to turn it down, thinking running out of drugs in here would be worse than hell.
That first morning in Pentonville, I got a letter from my sponsor Beverly. God bless Beverly and God damn Pentonville. On my second day, a prison guard took my photo illegally and sold it to the Sun. I was set up by an inmate who asked for my autograph while the officer took a picture. It was disgusting but the upside was being moved to solitary –my friend Amanda had threatened to sue Pentonville and so they moved me from my shared cell. I was happy to be on my own. I like my own company and there was no one to distrust. The prison officers on the whole were nice to me. I think we were all finding our feet. But the food stank like feet. I got to go out in the prison yard once a day. Luckily, you could smoke in your cell but it was still good to get outside. The theme of being in a seventies movie continued. One afternoon the door opened and there was an Italian priest. Father Carmello di Giovanni had previously been the prison chaplain so he had access to the prison.
‘Do you know John Themis?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘How do you know him? You’re Italian, he’s Greek.’
John was my writing partner and guitarist for a number of years. Turns out the priest knew a woman who knew John, which is very Greek, like most things in life. Seeing Father Carmello was massively helpful and I was thankful to John for sending him in. Priests, like churches, have an energy and I am Catholic after all. It encouraged me to write to Mum. In prison you worry the most about your family and I worried what my incarceration was doing to her. But Mum was delighted to hear from me.
Brothers, sisters, lovers, united in grief,
They would give you anything,
But they can’t set you free.
After six days in Pentonville that felt like a year, I was taken in a prison van to Edmunds Hill Prison (now called Prison Highpoint North, ironic) in Suffolk. I had to put up with other inmates singing ‘Karma Chameleon’ incessantly and calling me a batty boy. When I got out of the van and realised some of my detractors were going elsewhere, I put my head back in the van and shouted, ‘Goodbye, cunts.’ Well, it made the guards laugh.
When I landed, they must have been thinking, ‘Here comes trouble.’ It felt very different to Pentonville. We were in the middle of the countryside surrounded by green fields. Quite a contrast.
As soon as I could make a phone call I called Mum, but I had to wait to earn privileges before I could make that call. At this point I felt like I was in someone else’s life, even though everyone was treating me with kid gloves because ‘I’m Boy George’. I got my own cell, which was unusual but they didn’t know what they were dealing with. I had my own cell for a while and then was put in with a Muslim prisoner. I didn’t know how committed he was to Islam, but he was praying in the cell and he wasn’t talking to me. Only the main door to the wing was locked but not individual cells and the first night I was there he took his sleeping bag and slept in the corridor. It was clearly personal. Another prisoner – who listened to the most girlie Turkish pop all day long, clearly a romantic – had said, ‘I sleep with my hands on my balls in case Boy George comes in.’ In the end I asked to be moved to another block, but before they moved me they said, ‘It’s a pretty rowdy block, are you sure you want to go there?’
‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘If I have my own cell, I’ll just lock the door.’
My dreams of peace were short-lived, though. My cell door was rattling constantly with inmates wondering if I had any drugs, but also wanting to meet Boy George. Across the hall there was a big muscly black guy who was finishing a very long sentence. He was friendly and told me right out, ‘Anyone bothers you, come to me.’ Next to him there was another Muslim guy, who had a fight with officers after he complained of the smell of bacon coming from the officers’ mess. They tried to reason with him but he started punching out and he was wrestled away.
It was the biggest life lessons I’ve ever had to learn. When the alarms go off you shudder. You have to be super alert at all times without showing fear. They try to put you with people who are compatible, but who is compatible with me? I made friends quickly with two guys, called Terry and Justin (who was the spit of Philip Sallon). Terry was a run-of-the-mill convict. He was institutionalised. For him, it was easier to be in prison. And, selfishly, I was glad because he made life in prison so much more fun. His energy was hilarious and having been at ‘the hotel’ many times he knew how it all worked. I was quickly swapping sponge cake for extra milk and Cornflakes. Another towering black guy on the floor below would swap me milk and Rice Krispies for my cake or any pudding. I think people thought he was bullying me but he wasn’t. It was fair trade.
I had my first run-in with a guy who was on the phone arguing with his girlfriend. I caught his eye and he shouted, ‘What you fucking looking at, batty man?’ I pulled open the door of the phone booth and shouted, ‘Proud of it.’ And then ran quickly to my cell. People heard what he said and everyone came to my defence, especially Terry: ‘If that cunt says another word I’ll put one on him.’
It was also Terry who made a prison officer blush when he said, ‘Boy George fancies you. He’s asking for a strip search.’ Occasionally cells are turned over by the guards to see if untoward is going on. I had an early-morning raid and, guess what, the cute officer was involved. It was embarrassing when I had to lower my pants but probably more embarrassing for him. Nothing was found and life went on. You weren’t supposed to swap food or have extra pillows or blankets but if you keep your mouth shut and behave nothing is said.
Who you are outside will follow you inside. Flawed people are my currency and I know I’m one myself. Before my arrival, I think the prison governor was expecting an absolute nightmare. But for me it was a question of survival. Everyone in prison thinks they’re innocent, and the law has no room for nuance. Most things in life are neither. Often, it’s the circumstances you find yourself in and not some black stain on your soul. You learn quickly that prisoners are just like relatives. In fact, in the same prison was my brother’s brother-in-law, John, who I saw from time to time.
I remember a fierce, black, notorious shoplifting queen from Brixton was sent to Highpoint. I saw her in the yard thinking we might have a connection but she gave shade. She was having none of the Boy George business. She wanted to be the only gay in the village and she wasn’t holding back. She eventually got moved because she was sharing a cell with a straight guy and decided to be a naturist 24/7. Bending over while making the bed and showing her meat and veg to this poor bloke. I don’t think the guy was homophobic but it was a lot for anyone. Off she went.
Blake Fielder-Civil, Amy Winehouse’s husband, was also at Edmunds Hill. One day I went for coffee in his cell. He was still married to Amy at the time and played me her version of ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’. He said he had Donkey Kong tattooed just above his pubes and I have to assume he was telling the truth. Blake had that Sid Vicious vibe about him and I could see why Amy fell for him. Who doesn’t want a punky boyfriend who loves ska? They were like star-crossed lovers, a tragedy waiting to happen. At that point it hadn’t happened. Terry came running into my cell a few days later and said, ‘They’re moving Blake. The love affair’s over. You took the dairy off him. He couldn’t take the competition.’ As usual, Terry was paraphrasing Cockney slang in his unique way but I knew what he meant.
I got myself a job in the kitchen. The most coveted job in prison. If you’re not a psycho, your chances of landing a washing-up job are definitely higher. Anyone known for throwing around knives may struggle. I met Justin smoking outside the kitchen block. He gave me a roll up and I said, ‘You look the spit of my friend Philip Sallon.’
‘Correction, he looks like me,’ he said.
He was quick-witted and a bit camp, and I knew we were going to be friends. Justin is Jewish like Philip and had an affair with an orthodox Jewish married woman that went terribly wrong. He sent videos of them having sex to her family and chopped off her hair in the back of his car. He was a hairdresser. It was one of his worst hair-cuts. I used to hang out with Justin in his cell. He got special kosher food and would often give me a pot of lokshen. Like Philip, he was a hoarder. Under the bed it was like Kosher Kingdom.
My first day in the prison kitchen was steamy and tense. I was in the pot room using a big jet cleaner to wash pots and pans. It was good doing physical work and, like I’ve said, I like being busy. I stayed in the pot room for about a week before I was promoted to vegetarian cook. One of my quiches scored high praise. A guy in the kitchen said, ‘Who made this quiche?’
‘It was me,’ I offered.
‘Batty man make a nice quiche, you know.’
It’s hard to be offended when someone is being so poetic.
Making good vegetarian curries came easy even with the animal-food vegetables they supplied. Those carrots had an attitude and the knives weren’t sharp enough to take them on. I remember hearing Pink’s ‘So What?’ blaring around
the kitchen and everyone singing along.
I want to get in trouble, I want to start a fight.
Writing about prison is weirdly exciting in hindsight. I don’t remember it being particularly exciting at the time, it was more numbing. I remember when the football or boxing was on how all the inmates would scream and bang the doors. It’s the stuff of movies.
My first visitor was John Themis and then after that my three brothers visited. I remember thinking, ‘I’m glad it’s me in here and not one of them.’ It’s hard not to rail against things in prison but you have to keep your head down. Some inmates drove the guards insane with requests for this, that and the other. The guards are just ordinary men and women with families, and who needs more stress in an already stressful situation? There was no gay sex, whatever people think. No one was particularly homophobic but there was an undercurrent. I’ve been gay long enough to be able to read the room. I learned to manage, just like I’ve always done in any situation. When people were aggressive to me, I was aggressive back. You have to send out the message ‘leave me alone’ while being super friendly. You create your little clans: me, Terry and Justin, thick as thieves, except I’m not a thief any more.
In prison I read so many books. Not things I’d normally read. I had time on my hands and I wanted to push myself. I read all the books I pretended to read before I was locked up: Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, all the Harry Potter books, Wuthering Heights, and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. When I couldn’t find books in the prison library my friends sent them. I also received hundreds of insane gifts I wasn’t allowed to have and they were stored in the prison basement like some mad treasure trove. I was even sent money and left prison with a ton of money that I didn’t really need. I also had sacks of letters but I didn’t keep them. When I left, all I wanted to do was forget my time there – I was told, as long as I never come back, I would forget it in days.
But I remember the funny moments, as recorded in this book, just not the hours of mind-numbing boredom and loneliness. I remember the music. The boredom was broken by other people’s music and sometimes my own would break theirs. A prison favourite was The Killers’ ‘Are We Human?’. I can still see Terry singing, ‘Are we human or are we gangsters’, jumping around my cell like Bez from the Happy Mondays.
I remember that one of the prisoners was shagging a female prison officer. They were at it in the giant fridge and outside where you smoke. Getting away with it must have been thrilling. The guy was cute, but I had no cigarettes. Another prisoner called Pat said to me, ‘I really love one of your songs.’
‘Only one?’ I said. ‘Hope it’s not “Karma Chameleon”.’
When he said ‘GI Josephine’ I nearly fell over. It was a song I wrote about the American military gay ban: ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I wonder sometimes if people know what the words mean or if they just love the melody? I never did find out which one Pat was.
I was asked to smuggle out contraband but I refused. They used potato to make pocheen, some weird alcohol. One guy got extra time for smuggling out eggs and bacon in his trousers. A muscle guy, he was going to cook the bacon on the window and eat the eggs raw. We were allowed to work out in prison. I pushed myself to go to the gym, even though it was the most testosterone-heavy part of the prison. I even had to do a test before I was allowed in. It was like being back at school. We had to carry boxes, learn how to do CPR, thankfully with a dummy. Though there were a couple of inmates I would have resuscitated willingly . . .
I got amazing letters, hundreds in fact. Stephen Fry wrote to me very sweetly. John Themis wrote to me almost every day, and I got a bunch of letters from my DJ friends Princess Julia and Dusty O. It was much better when people wrote to tell me what was going on in a nightclub or some party rather than trying to comfort me. Fat Tony wrote too. He has the biggest handwriting. He just scribbled on pieces of paper and cards. In one he said, ‘Right now I wish I was disturbing you while you are watching The Weakest Link.’ It makes me smile to think of that. There was a time when you couldn’t call me during that show. Anne Robinson is my favourite TV wicked witch. She was even bitchy about me once on the American version: one of my friends and long-term fans, Terry Howard, won the show and made a pretty sum. She told Anne her hobby was following Boy George. Anne said something like, ‘I’m surprised anyone remembers him.’ No worries. Like Tina Turner, Janet Jackson, Prince and many more, I’ve forgiven her.
I love so many of Janet Jackson’s records and I still play them. But when it comes to me and Janet, let’s wait a while. The first time we met was on the American TV show Solid Gold. I brought a handful of 12-inch vinyl records to take back to London of her latest single, ‘What Have You Done For Me Lately?’ I love that record and know every single word (not the dance moves). I walked up to Janet backstage without my face on and said, ‘Oh, I love your new song.’ She wasn’t friendly and didn’t try to be. But I just walked off and got myself into my best ‘Boy George’ and was walking around backstage to make sure I was seen by everyone. One of her crew approached me with a video camera and said, ‘Will you record a message for Janet?’ So I did.
‘Next time you meet someone, be nice,’ I said.
They looked shocked but I carried on. I don’t remember what I said but, shortly after, I was summoned to her dressing room. She said she didn’t recognise me and I said, ‘That makes it worse. Are you saying you would have been nice to me if you knew who I was? What if I’m just a fan?’ We parted on awkward terms.
I saw her again in London at Top of the Pops a few years later and she looked straight through me. I thought, ‘She’s never going to change.’ In December 2019, I was performing at the Royal Albert Hall for the British Fashion Awards and when I looked over to her table she had her back to me and stayed in that position throughout my performance. I was already fuming with Naomi Campbell because she had asked me to sing for her after she accepted a major award. But she did her speech and then walked off without introducing me. I had to walk on like a numpty and sing ‘Everything I Own’. Seeing Janet Jackson sitting with her back to me really capped the night off.
When someone is a bit rude you never get over it, which is an important Post-it note to myself. Be nice. When some-one is weird and rude it’s a different story. There are always artists you’re going to forgive because you know they are super talented. But being talented doesn’t give anyone the right to behave badly or unconsciously. I’m not always warm to everyone. Actually, past tense these days. But I did have awkward moments, not only with other artists but also fans. It was mostly me apologising for saying something bitchy, whether it was Corinne Drewery of Swing Out Sister or George Michael.
I met Prince in Paris – even that sounds like a lyric. It was Paris Fashion Week and Prince and Madonna had been circling an event in their limos so that they could be the last to arrive. Who’s got the time? I think Prince won the toss and he arrived with Mayte Garcia, who was beautiful. All that drama to end up sitting in the corner.
You went to all that trouble,
To be no trouble,
So burst your own bubble.
Everyone was at that party: Prince, Madonna, J.Lo, Puff Daddy, the Propellerheads and maybe Missy Elliott but maybe I imagined that. Missy was at another Versace thing. At that point I found her quite unaware of who she was. ‘Who’s that?’ I thought. ‘Amazing.’ Not just sort of amazing, completely amazing. The lyrics firstly, because melody is overrated anyway. I next met Missy during the Viva Glam campaign for Mac in New York. I arrived off my nut on ecstasy and poor Christine had to try and paint my face while I taunted her.
‘Ooh, why you being so professional? Like you work at the make-up counter at Harrods. Ooh, she’s so proper. Look everyone, she’s wearing a white coat.’
She was actually wearing a nurse’s outfit that I customised, which is far sexier than my recollection. Christine carried on wilfully and then Missy Elliott arrived. She was carried in asleep and placed in a chair. They undressed her in the chair and put her in a robe. Pampered her, preened her, did her nails, started her make-up while Christine was in the full throes of painting me. Christine’s make-up was so beyond. She was using an ombre style of fading in and out insane colours and I looked like I’d landed from Mars. Missy woke up for a second, looked at me and said, ‘That shit is sick.’ And then went back to sleep. How beyond to have shared that moment with Missy, one of my favourite artists, and the fact she probably won’t remember it. It’s okay, Missy, it’s taken me sixty two years to remember anything.
Obviously, I’m being ironic because here I am writing a book. How I remember things is down to me and no one else. Even Marilyn. Whenever Marilyn tells a story, she remembers herself as the hero. I have learned through practising The Three Principles that how you remember things is life’s little psychedelic moment. I might remember things in a libellous way so you won’t be getting that story. In NA we are taught: speak your truth and make amends, except when it will harm you or others to do so. I know for a fact I’m never going to be best friends with Janet Jackson or Naomi Campbell. She might be furious to hear it but at least she’ll call me.
Back at the party in Paris, I was summoned to Prince’s corner. I glugged a couple of glasses of champagne for extra courage and off I went with my Slim Barrett, metal earring swinging in the breeze. After exchanging pleasantries – and by the way, I wasn’t asked to sit – he said, ‘I love your earring.’ ‘Oh, Slim Barrett would love to give you jewellery,’ I replied, saying it like he needed a break. This guy had thirty pairs of shoes made every month by a shoemaker in Hollywood and they had to be vegan. He certainly didn’t scrimp on the wardrobe. There are artists (I won’t mention names) that have more money than Onassis and still want a deal. It’s their ego that wants a discount. In real life, they don’t need it.
I’m not suggesting Prince was one of those people. He was a Gemini with a Pisces moon. I loved him as an artist and as a lyricist. He loved Joni Mitchell and he used to play ‘Karma Chameleon’ over and over. A moment of madness, surely. Meeting him that time was actually molto strano because I was eventually asked to sit down and then he didn’t speak for ten minutes. Also at the table was Donatella Versace and some other Italians, but at that point my Italian was super sketchy. I can’t hold a full conversation in Italian but I can work my way round a sentence. Trouble with that, if you say anything in Italian to an Italian, they march into the response hands flying believing you can respond. That’s where nodding comes in handy.
Prince continued not to speak. Writing about it now fills me with unexplainable hysteria. It was so funny. A plate of carbonara arrived for the wife and Prince started feeding her. I’m thinking, ‘What planet are you on, baby?’ The arrival of the carbonara gave me the perfect excuse to say goodbye.
‘It was lovely to meet you, enjoy your dinner.’
Even he would have appreciated that parting dart. Ever-one I know that knew him says he had a hilarious side. If he did, he didn’t show it to me and I can only work with the script I was given. I’ve seen him giving shade to people on video so I know he was a number. He turned down the Michael Jackson duet because it started with the line ‘Your butt is mine’ and he wanted Prince to sing it. Prince could have sung it with such humour and sensual knowing. The track was amazing and would have been doubly amazing with Prince on it.
I never met Michael Jackson, how annoying. Oh, wait a minute. When I was doing Taboo in London I was told he was outside the theatre in a blacked-out limousine. He may have been coming to the show but, if he was, Leigh Bowery frightened him off. I ran up to the limousine in a crash helmet and tutu and was screaming in the voice of Leigh, ‘Come out, I know you are in there. We love you, Michael Jackson.’ He never saw the show.
I loved, loved, loved Michael Jackson. As a performer he was untouchable. I loved his music and some of his antics. He didn’t like mine, though. I wish I’d met him. I almost did a duet with his daughter, Paris Jackson. She loved the song ‘London Calling Paris’ but in the end she said no. It would have been amazing because when I met her at that party in Paris she was so beautiful and warm.
At that same fashion show, Bono crossed the catwalk to give me a kiss. I love Bono. On my 60th birthday he sent me the most beautiful video message. I was in Ireland. I never posted it but it made me cry. The late designer Karl Lagerfeld wasn’t so friendly. He never was friendly to me. He probably thought I was too fat, like he rudely said of Adele. Who knows what he thought? Maybe he didn’t think anything, even worse, sitting in his summer castle with a mountain of books indifferent to my existence. However, when I’m standing in front of him with a massive Westwood hat covered in Dior badges, he better know I exist. Again, I loved Karl Lagerfeld regardless of what he thought of me. The fact that he ignored me every time I saw him was a bit John Waters. I still think he was major, with his high-collar haughtiness, like an amazing fashion wizard.
Every time the Propellerheads played something big, or one of Madonna’s records, she would get up and dance. The floor might be empty but once Madonna was on it everyone surrounded her like a new cloak she didn’t like. They left the dancefloor with her and she didn’t say hello to me, which didn’t help her cause. My friend met her once and he said, as he extended his arm to shake her hand she said, ‘Ugh, I don’t know where it’s been.’ He replied, ‘By my side all night.’ I told him he should have poked it in her eye.
I actually wrote about that Versace party in my Sunday Express column at the time. I caused a lot of pain with that column because I didn’t do my research and I was using it for revenge and scandal. What is the world without revenge and scandal? My friend Maria Smith said to me just recently, ‘Oh, when I hate people I’m never sad.’ If you divorce yourself from the feeling of hatred for another person, you might as well not bother in the first place.
Madonna is everything it says on the tin but she adds new ingredients every day. I know for a fact she’s too full of herself to even mention me. She once said, ‘Boy George was mean to me in the eighties and he’s still mean.’ To be fair, I haven’t really been given the opportunity. I found Karl Lagerfeld fascinating but Madonna tips the scales. I like loads of her records. Scrap that. I love some of her records. Not knowing anything about her I would assume she’d have issue with the word ‘some’. She came to see Taboo in New York but didn’t come backstage to say hello. We had previously received a cease-and-desist order on our version of ‘Vogue’. Let’s just say I abbreviated the lyrics to the song. When anyone sends me up gloriously, I appreciate it. I have a sense of humour, I don’t think Madonna does, despite some of the clothes she wears (LOL). Every gay man loves Madonna and there’s no one gayer than me. Her fans always try to defend her when I make a joke or a jibe. They are mostly missing the point. Madonna’s no wallflower. She took on the world in a cone bra. When I went to see her in New York with Marilyn she was writhing on top of a ghetto blaster saying, ‘Everyone has a box, only mine makes music. Like Bette and Joan, we should have been friends. There’s still time.
It was the same with Pete Burns – he once said to me, ‘To think all this time we could have been friends.’ In the eighties we all wanted to be the only queer in the village. Instead of supporting each other we bitched and insulted each other’s music. After years of bitching, we shook hands at the Daisy Chain in Brixton. I saw him walking towards me and I was ready to knock him out if he started. ‘Put it there,’ he said in that unforgiving Liverpool accent. I took his hand and he said, ‘How do you do it, all that fucking press torture? I have nothing but admiration.’ The thing is, I loved Pete Burns the minute I set eyes on him. I paid for his funeral and it was an honour. I almost said ‘pleasure’ and Pete would have laughed his head off. We had our wars for years. My publicist in New York, Susan Blonde, took Pete to one side and told him, ‘Boy George is our biggest star. You don’t say bad things about him.’ I never knew this happened and I would have been appalled. As friends we would have had scandalous fun. Pete appealed to my dark sense of humour.
My only worry when people are fierce is whether they are happy too. You can be arch and fun. Someone should tell Madonna. I’d love to receive that phone call and I would record it.
* * *
Soon after prison, with my electronic tag freshly fitted, I was deejaying at a daytime event at the Egg Club in King’s Cross. My frenemy Laurence Malice owned it at the time and Fat Tony was putting on an event. There was drink and there was drugs, but I had been clean for fourteen months by this point and felt comfortable being there. To my surprise, I saw a guy from prison who had always ignored me in the gym. He came up and said hello.
Another time I was recording in Bromley with Kevan Frost, my musical director and friend. I saw someone from prison at the train station. He was on his way back to Edmunds Hill. It was almost like I couldn’t escape it.
I saw my mad friend Justin a handful of times and I stayed friendly with Terry for a while, but in the end we lost contact. Terry was just what you need in prison. He was hilarious. Didn’t give a shit about anything until it actually happened. But on the outside he was too much of a reminder. A trigger. He went back to prison a number of times and I went back to Pentonville to see him. It was super weird being a visitor. They put you through the security process of locked doors and holding spaces. At one point I thought, ‘What if they don’t let me out?’ They were nice to me, though, and I got a few winks from officers. It was a quick visit.
Going back to prison, if only briefly, reminded me I never wanted to be there again. I often say to myself I would have done it so differently had I known what was possible. I changed a lot inside prison but I didn’t know it at the time. When people asked me if it changed me, I got very defensive. I didn’t realise the changes until I was free. When you’re in prison you’re just going through the process. The good news was I knew roughly when I might get out. I did everything I could to get an early release and when they released me after four months into my fifteen-month sentence I was thrilled. The press were there to meet me, of course, and in the photos I looked like Peter Gabriel. I looked like I’d put on loads of weight but I was just well rested. Once we lost the photographers, we drove into a service station and I bought myself a Snickers bar and a Gingsters cheese-and-onion pastie. It tasted like freedom. But it was weird to be free.
The truth is I wasn’t entirely free. I was heading home to be put on tag for the rest of my sentence. It led to another surreal moment, though. The women that came to tag me were so sweet and were mad fans.
‘We don’t want to do this,’ they said.
I told them, ‘Just don’t make it too tight.’
I heard stories about people removing them and gallivanting. But I didn’t conceive of doing anything like that. Even when I went to Brighton Pride to deejay I made it home by 7pm. The idea of going back to prison was not an option. I would even smoke in the garden by lying in the French windows with my legs in the house.
I went to the Notting Hill Carnival in 2009 with my Peckham Rolex and wore cut-offs. It was the one place in the world I knew I wouldn’t get shade. If people believed what I was accused of, they certainly didn’t show it. I don’t want to come across as disrespectful of what happened but equally I don’t want to appear moronically compliant. I have opinions about what happened to me and, even in all the ugliness, you can hopefully see that there was humour, there always is. I can’t spend the rest of my life defending or being sorry. I did something bad but nowhere near as bad as it was portrayed. I was charged, prosecuted and found guilty. I can’t escape that. At this point I do feel less weighed down about it. I knew in prison I was going to have to rebuild my life, brick by brick, and I have.
You wonder at times, ‘Am I as bad as the tabloid head-lines?’ and only you can answer that question. You have to know who you are deep inside. You have to forgive yourself first and take your seat at the table. When I went to the Brit Awards in 2011, they wanted to put me in a side room and I agreed, knowing that when I turned up that wouldn’t happen. I ended up getting shout-outs from Arcade Fire and Gnarls Barkley and I was so relieved. When you’ve broken the law and been convicted you can never fully get past those people who believe you can’t change. I’ve realised now that you don’t have to get past them. Richard Gere once said in a movie, ‘Good people do bad things.’ If I’m bad, it’s James Brown bad. And if you can’t be forgiven in rock and roll, you might as well be a lawyer.
When the tag eventually came off after several months, I was put on probation and had to meet with my probation officer, Dave, in Islington. He was a nice guy, asking me ridiculous questions, but I had to play along. Most of it was a nonsense and I had to fight my instincts to be sarcastic. I was attending NA meetings close by, which was a good counterweight. I’d love to know what Dave thought about the whole thing. He seemed like a Mod or someone who would like The Small Faces. It was like having probation with Paul Weller. I would often wonder what Dave did when he was having fun. A lot of insane things came into my head during that period. I wondered what the Queen thought of my going to one of her hotels. I wondered what Madonna thought. She definitely said something. If I heard she went to prison, do you think I’d have nothing to say? I’d probably write a song.