BOY GEORGE BANGS ON. AGAIN.

The latest churning of Boy George's publicity dairy takes the form of a Daily Mirror interview which starts off with George protesting that his tired tirades against John, Lucas and Michael (does he have a thing against people who have surnames which are also first names?) were "misunderstood" and that he wasn't being bitchy, honest. That's at least how it starts:

"Hang on, who fucking made Elton John the headmaster and who fucking made Madonna the queen? I've got every right to say what I like, and if they want to say things about me, fine."

It's a shame, actually - his calling of madonna out on kaballah would be spot-on, but buried amongst a load of other old tosh about how people aren't gay enough, or too gay, or... are showy gays. Brian Reade wonders aloud if he isn't, well, just trying to be "the only gay in the village."

There's a silence, followed by a dive into gay corporate-speak: "As a gay public person you are always managing your sexuality through any given situation. I'm harder on gay people because I expect more from them."

He's very straight, is George O'Dowd, until it comes to sex. Then he's so earnestly homosexual he could lecture in it. Which he does, constantly, in his book.

I tell him he comes across as being completely obsessed with his sexuality. Why? He laughs long and hard and gives me a pitiful look.

"I'm not obsessed, really I'm not. Because being gay is not your reality, it seems that I'm really obsessed with it.

"If I say anything gay, it's 'Oh, do you have to keep going on about THAT?' Well, I'm sorry, it's my reality and if you don't like it, then fuck off."

But George, it's not if you say anything gay; it's just your tiresome, 1980s only talking about it. And - while reaching for a Little Britain catchphrase is the last refuge of the desperate - you do come across like Daffyd; someone who is afraid that your identity is wafer-thin, that with being out and gay now a commonplace, you don't have very much to offer. It's not like you're always campaigning for gay rights, is it? You're just constantly trying to prove that somebody else isn't the right kind of gay. Good god man, Coronation Street has had a gay dog wedding. Being gay isn't interesting in its own right anymore. If your reality is managing your sexuality through a given situation in public, we'd suggest you don't really have existence in any sort of reality, pal.

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