“IF YOU don’t get a night’s sleep at 41 you can scare children at 200 yards,” said a nervous George Michael at a jam-packed press conference in Berlin. Dressed in black, wearing sunglasses and with a silver crucifix round his neck, the pop star proceeded to charm us with saucy insights into his bizarre life.
“I think I was the male Kylie,” he said. “God knows, I was the perpetrator of many fashion crimes back in the 1980s. The truth about that is that I dressed badly because I wasn’t having good sex. It’s like Kylie. She was completely clueless looking, then she went out with Michael Hutchence and she was a complete babe.”
Southan Morris’s documentary about the singer is littered with similar gems. Slung into a corner of a sofa, Michael delivers a potted history of his life from his childhood years in Bushey, Hertfordshire, to his recent protest songs against George Bush and the Iraq war. It’s a 93-minute confessional sprinkled with contributions — not all appreciative — from Elton John, Boy George, Noel Gallagher and Sting.
The most pleasing aspect about the documentary is the star’s candid desire to debunk his own myth. He discusses the pain of losing his Brazilian boyfriend, Anselmo, to Aids, as well as his dramatic arrest in a Beverly Hills lavatory in 1998 for trying to importune a policeman. Michael now regards the incident, which saw him charged with lewd behaviour, as a moment of madness and, ultimately, a relief.
This kind of soul-baring is presumably sheer torture for someone who is famously protective about his private life. So what on earth is he doing spilling his guts to the world? “I don’t think I’ve ever been good at the job of being a celebrity,” he admitted at the Berlin Film Festival. “A bit has to do with being outed.”
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A lot has to do with his conviction that his own genre is dead, and it is time to come clean about it. “It’s been killed off by corporate thinking,” Michael said. “And I’m not interested in sparring with pop acts like Robbie Williams, Rachel Stevens and Will Young.”
On screen he is equally disparaging about the ghastliness of Pop Idol and his bitter battle to escape the clutches of Sony Music Entertainment. But he is funny and nostalgic about his closet years with Wham! and the loneliness of not having a partner to share it with. He and a balding Andrew Ridgeley, sprawled across armchairs, chew over their time together like two old men baffled by the antics of youth.
Footage of their concerts is hysterical. The solo album, Faith, was the decisive turning point in Michael’s career. “Oh my God. I’m a massive star and I’m a poof. How do I deal with it?” he says to camera.
Not very well, as it turns out. The awards, his new iconic status and the adulation of his peers go straight to his head. “You silly fool. How did you get so arrogant?” he muses.
There’s a faint whiff of disingenuousness about the constant self-laceration. And the recent footage of his live performances is nothing if not flattering. That said, he does have one of the most terrific voices in the business.
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For Michael, the film provides a sense of closure after “22 years of stress”. This, apparently, is the last time we shall see him washing his laundry in public. A shame: to be honest, he’s not such a bad bloke.