It is 29 May 1984. Princess Margaret is the guest of honour at the Sony Radio Awards at the London Hilton Hotel. Among those lined up to greet her is Boy George, who is at the peak of his fame.
In February he won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and together with his group, Culture Club, Brit Awards for Best British Single (‘Karma Chameleon’) and Best British Group. He has recently been judged the most famous person in Britain by Tatler magazine, just above HM the Queen at number two. Princess Margaret’s name features nowhere in the top one hundred: the rapid growth in the celebrity population over the previous ten years or so has diminished her own fame, which has been overtaken even within the Royal Family, by, among others, Princess Diana, Princess Michael of Kent, and Prince William, who is just short of his second birthday.
Princess Margaret is wearing a green and white print dress. Towering over her is Boy George, well over six foot, in black sequins under a shocking-pink overcoat. The contrast could not be more extreme, though in their liberal application of make-up – heavy eye-liner, blusher, bright red lipstick – the two have something in common. Nevertheless, they look uneasy.
Princess Margaret dispenses a brief handshake to Boy George before moving on. A few minutes later, she is asked to pose with him for a more formal photograph. ‘I don’t know who he is,’ the Princess is overheard telling an aide. ‘But he looks like an over-made-up tart. I don’t want to be photographed with him.’
Her remark causes a stir. At first, Boy George appears unbothered. ‘It’s her royal prerogative if she doesn’t want to talk to me,’ he tells reporters. ‘I’m just a peasant.’ Later in the evening he is escorted to the door by the hotel’s head of security, having been apprehended in the ladies’ toilet.
The following day, a spokesman at Kensington Palace issues a denial that the Princess ever uttered the offending words, implausibly suggesting that she had been referring to his make-up resembling ‘commedia dell’arte’.* In response, Boy George grows more combative, saying, ‘If I had been rude to her, I would apologise.’ Later, a spokesman for Culture Club explains that this did not in fact mean that Boy George was demanding an apology.
Boy George is a garrulous character, unused to turning the other cheek. Asked by a reporter what he thinks of Princess Margaret’s supposed snub, he replies, ‘I don’t think I’m special, but I do object to having been called a tart. It’s a damn cheek. I bring more money into this country than she does. Princess Margaret went to school for elocution and I come from the gutter, which just goes to show you can’t buy manners.’
Once he gets going, he finds it hard to stop. ‘She’s not a happy person,’ he adds. ‘It shows in her face.’
(ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo)
A week later, a new waxwork of Boy George is unveiled in Madame Tussaud’s amidst much hoo-ha. Princess Margaret’s waxwork, which once occupied pride of place, could be seen tucked in somewhere towards the back on the far right of an extensive Royal Family group, two along from Captain Mark Phillips.
* The same spokesman, Lord Napier, was also responsible for issuing a denial that Princess Margaret had referred to ‘Irish pigs’ during a fund-raising tour of the United States in October 1979; she had, he insisted, been talking of Irish jigs. In his Private Eye diary, Auberon Waugh, a natural contrarian, noted that, far from causing upset by her remark, ‘all over the country people are raising their glasses to toast the Bonnie Princess’. However, this seemed to annoy him. ‘For the last fifty-six years,’ he wrote, stealthily adding seven years to her age, ‘this woman has been flouncing around embarrassing everybody with her rudeness, self-importance and general air of peevish boredom. Now it looks as if everything will be forgiven for the sake of one bon mot.’