No Rock And Roll Fun

YOU LIKE A LITTLE BOY GEORGE?: Was it our imagination or did Boy George attempt to shed the 'Boy' tag and image a few years back? I could have sworn - like Kid Jensen and Peter Pan before him - the Boy became a man, reverted to George O'Dowd, and stopped wearing stupid hats.
Maybe we did dream this, because now he's back on Play UK, doing a chat show - with hat, with Boy, with the same eye make-up he wore in the 80's. In addition, he's got Taboo, the musical of his life, playing away down in London, and he's doing the tour of chat shows himself - not always to acclaim, as trudging through piles of internet reaction, it becomes clear that some people are starting to get sick of the schtick - after all, part of the fall-out of his making blokes in slap commonplace in the 80's was to ensure that we're less than shocked by his appearance in 2001. Double entendres about back entrances? Why bother, when even Hollyoaks does male rape and Queer as Folk has made watching men shag the number one spectator sport for straight women. And did you hear the version of Karma Chameleon he made with people who'd won some sort of phonebox karaoke competition? The funny thing is, on Boy George One on One, he complained about how people come up to him and sing Karma Chameleon, giving the impression that he considers that's part of his past, when clearly he's stuck firmly in a kind of perpetual gift shop flogging memory-tat based on that one track.
The chat show itself isn't that bad - although it's not the lion-mauls-gazelle its trailers try to promise - more spot of two fisted pleasuring; and clearly the thing gets edited to buggery, presumably to ensure that the guests (of the order of Patsy Palmer and Jonathon Ross and his wife - one on two?) are able to get a word in edgeway between the Boy's rambling self-plumping anecdotage. However, the character chatshow is usually the sign of a personna hitting the edge of it's atmosphere - where is Mrs Merton now? Gone to Harold Shipman, we presume; Dame Edna is now stuck dancing like a bear for Ally McBeal. Having first tried to slew off Boy, George has now embraced him. The prospect is one of self-parody, rereleases and cabaret. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me re-recorded with Jayne McDonald by Christmas, we reckon.