Boy George: I wanted to lay demons to rest visiting my old school – but they wouldn’t have me back
As a child in the 1970s, Boy George didn’t have the easiest time at school, thanks to his gender-bending androgynous looks and desire to shock.
It appears things have not improved much, all these years on.
Hoping to lay old demons to rest and perhaps offer encouragement to similarly isolated youngsters, George offered to return to his alma mater to give a talk – only to be told, he says, it did not want him back.
The singer, whose flamboyant outfits and genre-mixing hits with Culture Club propelled him to fame in the early 1980s, attended Eltham Green school in south-east London as a teenager.
Regarded as a “sink school” where pupils were described by inspectors as “feral” and “out of control”, it later became Harris Academy Greenwich and turned its fortunes around. By 2016, it was rated as outstanding by Ofsted.
George claims that when he recently contacted Harris Academy proposing a visit, he was turned down.
“They wouldn’t let me in,” he said. “I tried to go back to my school and they wouldn’t let me, because it became an academy. When I went, it was the comprehensive, it was a mixed school with a terrible reputation.
“So they thought that I was going to just bring back all those bad memories [of] when the school was on its downs.”
George – who had a string of hits such as Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?, Church of the Poison Mind and Karma Chameleon when he formed Culture Club in the wake of London’s punk explosion – said he had hoped to lay some ghosts to rest with his visit.
“I did feel like it was going to be hugely cathartic to go back to school because I never liked school and I wish I’d liked school,” he said. “I mean, there were some great teachers...
“One of the people that was a big influence on me was my art teacher, Mr Riddock. He was amazing. Very encouraging. So there were good things about it too.”
Speaking on the US daytime talk show Sherri, George admitted he did not have the best disciplinary record at Eltham Green, thanks to his experimentation with clothes.
“I got sent home all the time for having a safety pin in my tie or platform shoes that were too high or an extra little panel in my jeans to make them more flared,” he told Sherri Shepherd.
“And then I discovered soul music; and then I discovered American retro Hawaiian shirts, plastic sandals, big baggy trousers; and then the kids were like: ‘You’re wearing your granddad’s clothes.’”
‘Character-shaping’
George – who has previously compared his family history to a “sad Irish song” – says his school experience, though painful at the time, was character-shaping and helped him become a groundbreaking performer.
“It was, like, anything they could do to make you feel small. But I think it made megrow more towards the light, in a way,” he said.
“It’s a funny thing when you’re a kid, right? You want to upset people just by wearing things, dressing in a certain way, and you get a pleasure out of the reaction. But sometimes people take it too far.
“If you don’t like it, just get on with your own life. [But] they get so offended, they want to attack you or something like that. And then it’s different. Then it gets scary.
“But we’re all dressing up. We’re all pretending to be someone every day, however we are.”
George, now 62, acknowledges that his influence can be seen in some of today’s gender-fluid pop stars, such as Harry Styles.
“When I see someone like Harry Styles doing what he’s doing, I love it. I’m very supportive,” he said.
“I think it’s great. I mean, he’s a dandy ... It is not about sexuality, it’s just about wanting to stand out. A dandy is anyone with just great style, whether they’re a drag queen [or not].”
‘He’d be more than welcome’
It seems that the school didn’t really want to hurt George. After being contacted by The Telegraph, a spokesman for the Harris Federation said: “We’ve struggled to find a record of Boy George asking to visit Harris Academy Greenwich but, of course, he’d be more than welcome.
“We will contact him after Easter to arrange a day.”
