BOY GEORGE, the androgynous Eighties pop icon, suffered public humiliation yesterday when he was forced to sweep the streets of New York before a throng of pursuing photographers and TV cameras.
The once-glamorous star was almost unrecognisable as he donned an orange “New York City Department of Sanitation” vest over his black sweatshirt and three-quarter-length jeans to clean a slip-road by the Brooklyn Bridge as part of a community service order. But the former Culture Club singer remained defiant, declaring: “Nothing is going to rehabilitate me.”
“My mum was a cleaner. My dad was a builder. I do not give a f***, you know. All I am doing is my community service. Let me do it,” he screamed as he flicked dust and cigarette ends at reporters with his government-issued brush. “It’s supposed to be making me humble. Why don’t you let me do it?”
The 45-year-old artist, known for hits such as Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?, ran foul of the law in a bizarre incident in October when he called police with a bogus report of a burglary at his flat in the Little Italy district and ended up being arrested for cocaine possession.
The charge was dropped in March when the singer, born George O’Dowd, pleaded guilty to a lesser offence of filing a false police report.
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O’Dowd turned up for duty at a sanitatation department garage on the Lower East Side two minutes before the 7am deadline with a Channel 4 documentary film crew in his car.
He was driven through Chinatown and dropped off by the Brooklyn Bridge. The scene quickly became a scrum, with Boy George rounding on a reporter from a US TV show: “You’re really pathetic. You’re the one following me sweeping the streets. Who needs to get a life better than you.”
Sanitation workers then ordered the singer back to the garage. “Things outside in the street were a little chaotic,” a department spokesman said. “We’ll see if there’s some cleaning that can be done inside.”
Jeremy Pearce, Boy George’s co-manager, complained that the street work appeared to have been staged for the media. “He does not need to be humiliated. He is a humble person,” he said. “He sweeps his apartment, but he has not swept the streets before.”
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George Michael was sentenced to 80 hours of community service for “engaging in a lewd act” in a Los Angeles public lavatory in 1998
In February Pete Doherty, the Babyshambles singer, was sentenced to 12 months’ community service for possessing hard drugs
Winona Ryder was given three years’ probation and 480 hours’ community service for stealing £3,500 of goods from Saks Fifth Avenue in 2002
In 2000, Halle Berry drove through a red light, hit another car and left the scene. The Bond actress was given three years’ probation, fined £9,000 and ordered to do 200 hours’ community service