30 Flamboyant Photos of Boy George at the Height of His Fame During the 1980s

Boy George is a British singer, known for his flamboyant and androgynous image, who once fronted the band Culture Club. At the height of the band’s fame, during the 1980s, they recorded global hit songs such as “Karma Chameleon”, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” and “Time (Clock of the Heart)”. George is known for his soulful voice and his androgynous appearance. He was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

By the 1980s, the New Romantic Movement had emerged in the U.K. Followers of the New Romantic period, influenced heavily by artists such as David Bowie, often dressed in grand caricatures of the 19th century English Romantic period. This included exaggerated upscale hairstyles and fashion statements. Men typically wore androgynous clothing and makeup, such as eyeliner.

The style became a calling card for George, whose flamboyance fit their beliefs perfectly. The attention the New Romantics attracted inevitably created many new headlines for the press. It wasn’t long before George was giving interviews based purely on his appearance.

George soon became a household name, making him a natural choice for one of the lead vocals on the Band Aid single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in 1984. However the pressure of fame began to take its toll, and by late 1985 George had developed an addiction to heroin. Culture Club began to lose their way musically.

When George was with Culture Club, much was made of his androgynous appearance, and there was speculation about his sexuality. When asked by Joan Rivers in an interview on her show in 1983, “Do you prefer men or women?”, George replied, “Oh both.” In 1985, when asked by Barbara Walters about his sexual orientation, George said he was bisexual and had had various girlfriends and boyfriends, in the past. He gave a famous, oft-quoted response to an interviewer that he preferred “a nice cup of tea” to sex.

In his 1995 autobiography Take It Like a Man, George stated that he was actually gay, not bisexual, and that he had secret relationships with punk rock singer Kirk Brandon and Culture Club drummer, Jon Moss. He stated many of the songs he wrote for Culture Club were about his relationship with Moss.

In 2006, in an episodic documentary directed by Simon George titled The Madness of Boy George, George declared on camera he was “militantly gay”. In a 2008 documentary Living with Boy George, he talks about his first realization he was gay, and when he first told his parents. He discloses that he understands why men fall in love with one another as well as with women.

Concurrently with developing his career as a DJ in the late 1990s, George adopted a macrobiotic diet, which he had been attempting to follow since 1988. In 2001, he published the Karma Cookbook, co-written with Dragana Brown, a private macrobiotic cook and teacher whom George met in 1986. By 2014, George had become a raw vegan after years of occasionally trying the diet.

George appeared on an episode of BBC television genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? in 2018, on which it was revealed that he was related to executed Irish revolutionary Thomas Bryan, a member of the “Forgotten Ten”.