APPARENTLY THE MET HAVE SPECIAL 'POLICE & TABLOID AWARE' POSTERS FOR GEORGE MICHAEL'S CAR

To be found slumped, asleep at a wheel, in London's busy central London is unfortunate. To be found in such a state more than once is... oh, at least more than unfortunate. It seems prior to his Hyde Park incident, George Michael had done the same thing in Primrose Hill. That time, last October, he had been found by Natalie Griffith, who was more discreet. For a while, reports The Sun:

Natalie confessed last night that she tried to cover up for George and had not gone to the media at the time.

You'll note that now "not ringing the tabloids right away" is considered the sort of thing one confesses to, shamefully, rather than takes pride in. Luckily, Natalie has done the, erm, right thing now:

“It was the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. The Range Rover had stopped in the middle of the street with the engine running.

“The driver seemed to be hunched over, like he was reading.

“I got a total shock when we saw it was George. He had an unlit roll-up in his mouth, which looked like a spliff. It was like he stopped in the middle of the street to do something — maybe it was to roll the spliff — and then collapsed.

“This really loud lovey-dovey music was coming out of the car and we were knocking on the door but nothing happened.

“So we opened the door and tried to wake him up. Even when we got in, he didn’t stir. We turned the music off and took the keys out, and my boyfriend took the roll-up out of his mouth.

“We were there for about 15 minutes trying to wake him up. I leaned over to smell his breath but he didn’t smell of booze.”

Mum-of-one Natalie continued: “We got so worried because we couldn’t wake him up that we called the police, but they couldn’t wake him either.”

So there were also police who kept this quiet, too? That's got to be a first.

But it's not just the public who The Sun feel have something to apologise for. It's not happy that Michael is relaxed about what happened at the weekend:

For a star who is paranoid about his privacy, George has made a very public affair of his biggest misdemeanours.

Being slumped across his steering wheel on one of Britain’s busiest streets was unlikely to go unnoticed.

Well, if the October incident really happened, it did go largely unnoticed for nearly half a year. But the paper has it's dander up:

And though not quite up there with his arrest in an LA public toilet, in terms of telling the world: “Look at me and my weird life,” it is not far off.

The jokey statement issued last night sums up what George thinks about his public image.

Quite simply, he doesn’t care what the public think about him sleeping with rent boys, or about his drug-taking.

But why should he care? And, come to that, why should the public think anything about it - it's not like he's hurting anybody. Not that the Sun is totally unsympathetic - it knows George has had a tough life:

Then in 1997 his mum Lesley died from cancer, and in the same year his friend Princess Diana lost her life.

Now, there's a theory Al-Fayed hasn't thought of yet... could MI5 (and possibly Mossad) have killed Diana in a bid to send George Michael into a spiral of odd drug-related behaviour to undermine his anti-Blair and Bush line? Surely the Daily Express should be investigating.

Earlier: It's my own fault, says George

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