Boy George's 1970s: Save Me From Suburbia

This programme contains some strong language.

When I was a little boy, I lived in grey suburbia

in a large Irish family, where my dad was boss.

MUSIC: Get It On by T.Rex

# So come on, feel the noise... #

Watching Top Of The Pops on Thursdays

was where I learned to be a real man.

# He'll steal your woman out from under your nose... #

The glam rockers were my only hope.

But even they seemed to be finding their way.

# We just haven't got a clue what to do. #

Steve Priest wasn't the only one.

MUSIC: I Feel Love by Donna Summer

In the '70s, nobody knew what to do about Britain.

The economy was in tatters.

Industry was in decline.

Governments changed like traffic lights.

There were fears about terrorism, immigration and fascism.

We joined Europe and then we wanted out.

This is a film about how the '70s shaped me.

It's my story, but it's also Britain's.

I didn't watch the news

but if I'd known what I know now, I would've moved to Mars.

I was busy learning about the important stuff -

about David Bowie and Marc Bolan,

dressing up and going out and coming out -

and racing towards a fateful day at the BBC.

On September the 30th 1982,

there was a disaster at Top Of The Pops.

It was Shakin' Stevens. He couldn't make it.

Me and my band were very available.

For the first time on Top Of The Pops, it's Culture Club.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# Give me time... #

'In three minutes and 22 seconds,

'my arched eyebrows caused national alarm and confusion.

'My make-up outraged the press.'

"It called itself a boy, but was it a girl?"

Civilisation was in grave danger.

# Do you really want to hurt me? #

'Our song went to number one in Britain and many other countries.

'It was 1982 and the start of a life with and without Culture Club -

'love, money, drugs, fame and more drama.'

People got to know me in the 1980s,

but my journey from boy to Boy George really began in the 1970s.

This programme contains some strong language

They say the past is another country.

These days, I spend a lot of time living in another country.

Being here in America, it feels easier to have some perspective

on the Britain and the decade I grew up in.

For some people, it's a taste or a smell that triggers memories.

For me, it's always music.

A good record shop is like a time machine.

These days, records are for hipsters,

but back in the '70s, they were all we had.

Ah-ha-ha!

The thing about vinyl...

is it takes you back to a moment in time.

You know, these are like memories.

A talisman. These are sacred objects.

To the people of my generation, these are sacred objects.

MUSIC: Love Story by Shirley Bassey

# Where do I begin... #

-This is where

-I

-began.

Eltham, in south-east London.

In 1970, I was nine years old.

But even at that age, my world was sparkling!

When the family were out, I was alone with a hairbrush microphone.

And throwing her arms around was Shirley Bassey.

In this very living room, I fell in love with Shirley Bassey,

and the idea of, kind of, being a performer.

You know, I loved the whole drama of it.

In the '70s, we were very typical of a lot of families.

My dad ruled the roost.

He went out to work, my mum was supposed to cook, clean,

run the house.

And I think one of the reasons I love Shirley so much is because

my mum, you know, was kind of, you know, like a normal housewife,

and never got a chance to be glamorous.

So I really became quite obsessed with glamorous,

strong women like Shirley Bassey, Joan Collins - people like that,

that were, like, glamorous and, you know, got their own way.

That's never really changed! HE LAUGHS

MUSIC: Low Rider by War

Right from the start, I needed glamour.

Eltham Green Secondary was never going to appeal.

Mum had to drag me out of bed and push me out the door every morning.

Mum still lives in the house we moved into in 1974.

-TV:

-'It's one of the nation's newest giant comprehensives and, in fact,

'a school of tomorrow for the children of today.'

In the '70s, teachers just didn't like kids.

If you came from a certain type of family,

you were marked the minute you went into school.

My older brother had been arrested, you know, he'd been arrested

for stealing lead off the school roof where I went to.

So the minute I went to school, it was like,

"You're an O'Dowd - you're trouble."

They don't want you to have a personality.

They don't want you to be an individual. They want you to shut up.

And, you know, as you can see...

And unfortunately, Georgie could not shut up.

HE CHUCKLES Never!

Me and some of the friends I'd yet to meet didn't really fit into

the great comprehensive education experiment of the 1970s.

At the time, particularly in the comprehensive system,

the idea was that you were factory fodder

and it didn't matter whether you were taught or not.

There were boy lessons and girl lessons.

No gender-bending allowed.

I remember going to see the careers officer and saying,

"Oh, maybe I could be a make-up artist!" And I remember them saying,

"Mr O'Dowd, you need to be more practical and realistic."

I wasn't allowed to take woodwork,

because girls didn't do woodwork.

But I was allowed to do home economics,

cos that's what girls did.

Home economics.

We were geared up to cleaning ovens and baking

a Victoria sponge. It was really quite archaic.

'In the commerce class, for example,

'there's no frantic squabbling over one battered old typewriter.'

That's the other thing about the '70s - you could still get hit.

-That was the other thing.

-No, I don't... They can't do it now.

-No, in the '70s, darling.

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

We got caned on a regular basis. It's so barbaric.

What does that teach you?

-That you hit people - that's how you get your way. It's awful.

-Yeah.

People were terrified.

Outside in the real world, things were tough.

But me and my friends weren't interested in current affairs.

The '70s did have a drabness attached to it,

which seems to be a thing that sort of escaped me, somehow.

I wasn't particularly aware of how difficult things were.

There was just always a crisis.

Funnily enough, I don't remember a whole lot about that.

It seemed Britain was on the edge.

Money had to come from foreign banks to bail us out.

I want to speak to you simply and plainly

about the grave emergency now facing our country.

Everyone was saying the unions were running the country.

But the first I knew about politics was the miners' strike,

when all the lights went out.

When you're a kid and the lights go off, it's actually quite exciting. You can get away with more!

HE CHUCKLES

I mean, things like Edward Heath, you know, obviously, the miners...

I remember the rubbish strikes. You know, there was all that.

But it was kind of going on, you know,

with all the things, you know, like music,

and all the things that excited me. They were more important to me.

I was more interested in myself.

It's a terrible thing to admit, really.

We are limiting the use of electricity by almost all factories,

shops and offices to three days a week.

You didn't really get much notice that there was going to be a cut

and it was a mad rush to the local shop, you know, to see

who could get there first, you know,

to buy up all the candles.

If you had a camping stove, you'd fire it up and have

some hot baked beans and it'd be a bit of an adventure.

I'm trying to remember what the hell we did,

you know, with the candles. You'd go to bed!

The economy was in crisis

and unemployment was the worst since the War.

We cannot solve these problems with a divided and embittered nation.

There seemed to be no kind of hope,

you know, like, for you, and there was a lack of jobs.

The company my father worked for kind of went under.

It was happening everywhere.

There was a lot of talk about being on the dole.

My peers would talk about it like that's what they were going to do,

because that's what their parents did.

Of course, I was one of them, on the dole.

You went to the job centre and you got, like, 12 quid.

Whoopee(!)

I was only interested in my music -

an obsession I inherited from my older brother, Richard.

It was really Richard that had all the Bowie records.

And I remember when Bowie did the Ziggy thing,

Richard kind of went off him a bit and went more to Alice Cooper,

so it was a bit darker. So I inherited Bowie.

Oh, my God. The record of all records!

"He swallowed his pride and puckered his lips

"Showed me the leather belt round his hips."

I fancied him a little bit in this period. He was quite cute.

HE CHUCKLES

# In the corner of the morning in the past. #

When my brother Richard gave me Bowie's album

The Man Who Sold The World, I literally wore it out.

My God.

Bowie was unique because he was so contradictory in every way.

Cos he wasn't like the archetypal kind of homosexual or bisexual.

He wasn't really even that, I don't think.

I don't think... I don't know what he was.

MUSIC: Starman by David Bowie

But for me, yeah, he was everything.

Absolutely everything.

# I lean back on my radio-oh-oh... #

The album came out in 1972

and that summer, I first saw the alien land on Top Of The Pops.

It was a lightbulb moment.

The seminal moment of revelation.

# There's a star man waiting in the sky... #

Seeing Bowie doing Starman was a major moment.

It was aligned to landing on the moon, the Space Race.

All this technology that was going on.

# I had to phone someone so I picked on you... #

You were like, "Oh, wow, this is the alien. This is the outsider."

And I already knew that I was an outsider.

I was a gay teenager.

I could link in with David Bowie straightaway.

If you did feel like you were somewhat on the outside of

things, suddenly you belonged to, like, the world of Ziggy Stardust.

# He told us not to blow it

# Cos he knows it's all worthwhile. #

I remember feeling intimidated on some level

and at the same time fascinated.

It was like, "My God, I want a lifestyle like that. And I want to be like that."

# I hear the sound... #

Hardly any stardust reached Eltham but my brother and his mates were

always slipping off to a place that sounded a bit like Las Vegas.

When rock stars came to south London, this is where they

came to, Lewisham Odeon, which is now a pile of bricks.

Why did they knock it down?

Awful sacrilege. I came to see Rod Stewart and the Faces here.

I came to see David Essex, Blackfoot Sue, Chuck Berry.

I mean, I was always here.

If I wasn't at a gig, I'd be at the back of the stage,

hovering, in the hope that I would see someone famous.

The biggest gig I ever saw here was in 1972 when I

was 11 and 11 months old

and that was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,

which for me was a life-defining moment.

It really changed everything for me.

# The films that I made... #

Even from the back of Lewisham Odeon, David Bowie was bigger

than he'd been on TV. He created an extraordinary landscape.

He wore make-up and said he was bisexual.

# Suck, baby, suck

# Give me your head... #

He wasn't ordinary. He was all-powerful, a superhero.

I knew Ziggy Stardust was the character

and David Bowie was the performer.

The clothes and the make-up gave him an edge but when

he took them off, he was just a boy from south London like me.

Turned out we lived on the same bus route.

My older brother, Richard, sent me to the chemist

to develop some Kodak film and I think

I was allowed to get some sweets with some of the change.

So I went off to the local shops in Middle Park with this film

and I got to the chemist and I was standing outside and I was

chatting to some friends and it was a really hot day.

It was about 11 in the morning and as I was talking to these

friends of mine, I turned around and there was a bus

and it said Beckenham and I was like...

"Oh! A bus from Eltham goes to Beckenham," and I just jumped on it.

All the fans knew that David Bowie lived in Beckenham.

My friends Jo and Danny have come with me to tread the holy ground.

Everyone knew that inside David and Angie lolled about in velvet

jumpsuits, eating space food and getting visits from Lou Reed.

I'm sure it was there. I know it was on this main road.

I think this is it. This is where it was.

-So, this would have been the back garden...

-Wow!

-This area.

The house was kind of like an Edwardian mansion block.

He had a flat in it.

You could see washing on the line so we were contemplating getting over

and nicking some clothes. "Maybe there's Bowie's pants or something."

And we were sitting outside most of the day and at some point in

the afternoon, Angie opened one of the windows and was like,

"Why don't you all just fuck off?" And we were like, "Oh, my God."

It was like acknowledgement. It was the highlight of our year.

But this place is not recognisable.

The following summer, Ziggy was dead,

killed off on stage at the Hammersmith Odeon.

I knew Bowie would be back. He was just changing costume.

But he left a huge glam vacuum.

Bowie went off to Berlin, didn't he,

and sort of disappeared. And there'd be little snippets

of things in the press and you'd see articles and there would be pictures.

When he came back in 1976,

I was at Victoria with the other fans.

You know, he was wearing...

It was kind of like a Hollywood collarless shirt.

Yes, he looked pretty conservative compared to Ziggy but then

he did Boys Keep Swinging, where he was in drag.

It always felt like Bowie was one step ahead of everyone.

Even at the time, I knew he was at the cutting edge

of the '70s gender debate.

But it wasn't going on in our family.

My uncles and aunts, the men, did what they wanted and the women

kind of cleaned up the mess, basically. That was the '70s.

Bowie knew that alpha males were an endangered species.

The new women's libbers wanted to be heard.

They had outrageous demands - equal pay, equal rights

and the pill they'd been promised in the '60s.

I don't think I used the term "women's lib".

I was always saying to my mum, "Why do you let Dad talk to you like that?

"Why do you let him treat you like that?"

Men treat women really badly and women put up with it.

That's what I remember from being a kid.

I did have a meeting with my careers officer,

who said I could be a secretary for a couple of years

and then I was expected to get married.

I asked a female relative what a lesbian was and she said,

"Someone who's not very nice."

And I also asked, "What's a feminist?"

And I got the same answer.

The feminist movement didn't really appeal to me very much.

Topless festival dancing and things.

Dishevelled. A bit too feral.

Some men weren't changing.

After we moved to the big house,

I still shared a room with three very, very hetero brothers.

Here's a picture of me and my boxing brother. Enough said.

I felt like the only gay in suburbia.

But '70s TV was full of them.

You know, in the '70s, you had all these fantastic kind of camp men

-on TV and nobody ever really said they were gay.

-No.

It was like, we all knew they were, sort of, obviously not regular guys.

What did you think about Larry Grayson? Did you think he was gay?

-I liked him, yeah.

-Did you know he was gay?

-No, I wouldn't... No.

-Really?

-No.

-You knew

-I

-was gay.

-I didn't...

Did you know I was gay?

No. I knew you were different. It made no difference to me.

-But you used to say I was theatrical.

-I was what?

-Theatrical.

-Highly strung.

-Of course you were. Yeah, you were.

And you're still highly strung.

I thought that was kind of your way of sort of saying, "He's gay."

-I didn't even know what the word meant.

-Oh, really?

-Yeah.

-Well, I used to hear it a lot at school, you see.

-Yeah.

Tried to burn me out. I'd say, "What a gay day."

If Larry Grayson was on telly, the next day,

it would all be like, "Shut that door," at school.

-Yeah.

-It was constant.

I say, what about this?

-He was brilliant, wasn't he?

-He was brilliant.

But you know, a lot of gay men didn't like all those camp icons

because they felt that they were spoiling it for them.

Like they were portraying this image of gay people that was very

effeminate and weak.

Well, it's too big for a cake.

And it's too small for a midnight service.

I loved those people.

-On TV in the '70s, you only had a certain type of gay man.

-Yeah.

It was always like, "Shut that door."

"Oh, look at the muck in here." You know? It was all very camp.

At Christmas 1975, honesty broke out.

I'm not merely a stopped clock.

I'm a stopped grandfather clock.

The Naked Civil Servant was the story of Quentin Crisp.

And I remember this was on TV and I was here on my own,

lying on the floor, watching this show, like, transfixed.

Because, you know, I thought it all started with Bowie.

Suddenly, I see this man from, like,

the 1930s with hennaed hair and make-up.

You know, outwardly homosexual.

It was a true story and it blew my mind.

I couldn't believe it.

As a kid, I thought Bowie was really brave but then you look at

what Quentin Crisp did and you think, "That's beyond brave."

I was the centre of attention,

without feeling that I was in danger.

-Do you fancy one of us, then?

-Which one of us do you fancy?

The other thing about Quentin Crisp was he was apologetic.

And we were part of a new breed of gay people that were not apologetic.

We weren't going to apologise for being gay.

In the '80s, I made a pilgrimage to see Quentin Crisp, here in New York.

He still thought being gay was a curse.

That's one reason I loved David Bowie.

He said it was OK to be gay.

It had only been legal to be a gay man in England and Wales

since 1967 and the age of consent was 21.

I was only 15 but I was already experimenting.

# In these days of changing ways

# So-called liberated days

# A story comes to mind of a friend of mine... #

My mum actually bought me The Killing of Georgie Parts I and II

and it was in a paper bag.

She put it in my sock drawer in my bedroom.

It was like my mum's way of not talking about it.

It was like, "I know what's going on." You know?

And sort of her funny way of kind of accepting it without having

to get involved in the details of it, you know?

Because, you know, I was going off to the West End and I was

running around and I was quite brave and I think it was just

sort of, "Be careful."

It was her way of trying to kind of let me know that she was worried

about me and she sort of understood but didn't understand. You know?

# Paul said there must be a mistake

# How can my son not be straight?

# After all I've said and done for him? #

I shouldn't be laughing!

I'm sure my parents had sleepless nights about me being gay

but I think they were more worried when I left school at 15.

It couldn't have been a worse time to be looking for work.

These Sunderland teenagers are already veterans of

the battle for jobs in Britain's depressed areas,

where the odds are often 10-1 against employment.

The dole queue was a bit grim for me.

I thought I could doss in bed but Mum soon cracked the whip.

I wanted a job doing something fabulous but I was soon

stacking shelves in a well-known supermarket.

Real life was boring but just in the nick of time,

punk rock came to the rescue.

Because the old film is so grainy,

we think of punk as grim and grey but I remember it in

Technicolor because it kicked off in the boiling summer of 1976.

That was really the hottest summer of all.

I'd never known anything like it and it was relentless, every day.

That kind of sticky horrible heat that goes on and on.

Everybody's lawn looked like straw.

I remember I nearly fainted at the bus stop.

I had a bit of a moment and nearly passed out.

People were advised to take a bath with a friend.

The hot summer of '76 was fantastically important

because this changes everything. Everybody gets out on the street.

There's a sense of possibility, a sense of openness. And suddenly,

something can break loose and that's what happened with punk rock.

The cult is called punk.

The music, punk rock.

Raw, outrageous and crude.

It was a jolt of energy. It was a break with the past.

It was truly 1970s rock music. The '60s were long gone.

And everybody was fed up with all the '60s people

continuing to make albums.

Punk was designed almost self-consciously to appeal to

a new generation.

George turned 16 in 1977 so he was the perfect age for it.

For me, it was just a very colourful time, you know, a liberated time.

You felt like you could be part of it. It was an energy

and an attitude. Musical talent wasn't a big thing.

The first time the Sex Pistols appeared on TV,

it was the clothing that the presenter was really interested in.

Also trying to shock everyone. Your clothes are bizarre.

What about the word "punk"? If you look it up in a dictionary...

They're only bizarre to old people.

They ain't bizarre to young kids.

Possibly, possibly. I don't have a safety pin through my nose.

What about the word "punk"?

It means worthless, nasty.

Johnny Rotten, are you happy with this word?

No, the press gave us it.

It's their problem, not ours. We never called ourselves punk.

Punk rock enabled intelligent people who hadn't had the advantage

of an expensive, elite education to become stars.

For me and my punk mates,

it wasn't just about the music or pretending to be angry with society.

We were interested in a new look and a place to see it and buy it

was on the Kings Road in Chelsea.

I think that when punk started, to me it was like a fashion thing.

And it was completely tied to Malcolm McLaren and

Vivienne Westwood's shop.

It was a way for them to sell more clothes, I think.

Vivienne Westwood's shop, it used to be called Seditionaries.

It's been called Sex. Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die.

And now it is World's End.

And this is where we used to gravitate to on the King's Road.

We walked the whole, entire length

of the King's Road to end up at this temple.

This fashion temple,

which sold amazing clothes that were really expensive.

This is where it all happened.

When the shop was Sex, during the punk era,

it was really intimidating.

# Down, down

# Down down... #

The BBC sent actor Derek Nimmo in to experience the terror

on behalf of the nation.

Erm, hello, Mr Nimmo.

So, you are right down there in bondage.

You look so bloody boring. I cannot believe it.

The point is to change yourself.

But why? Why does one have to change?

Because then you'll feel great.

Myself and Jeremy Healey were in Leicester Square and we saw

Vivienne and Debbie and they were wearing all the clothes.

They were wearing orange bondage trousers and we'd never seen it.

We followed them around Leicester Square.

We were like, "Look at those shoes!"

We were like literally obsessed.

I eventually got the whole thing but I wanted the trousers to start with.

The trousers were the kill. They were like the most important thing.

My dad used to gamble. He'd say, "Don't tell your mother."

"Of course I'm going to keep quiet but there's a pair of trousers I want." Anyway, so I got them.

I used to live in them.

They could have walked on their own, they were so dirty.

So, no new hats?

Of course, punk was about kicking against the system.

At 60 quid, your Westwood T-shirt was more about submission

than sedition. Avarice in the UK.

Punk originally had this sort of like idea of presenting yourself

in a way that represented your uniqueness,

creating your own individual look.

An anti-fashion statement.

Club creature Philip Sallon was the Queen of DIY couture.

Global Village is now Heaven, which is virtually the biggest club

in London, and I'd never been before.

And then I stripped off and I had a bin liner on, chains and bare legs.

And the bouncers dragged me out of there.

They said within six weeks, the whole club was wearing bin liners.

One of the standard symbols of punk became the safety pin.

You know, that was really, like, never been seen before.

All of a sudden, you could pick up

a sink plug and wear that as an earring. Or a tampon.

If you wanted to put a cushion on your head

and tie it up with a bit of ribbon and go out like that, you could.

Promenading down the King's Road was really crucial.

It was all about saying something about yourself through your clothes.

And remember, we didn't have social networking

so we did our talking on our bodies.

But your clothes could also get you into a lot of trouble.

Around every corner, there was someone from another fashion tribe,

just waiting to knock your teeth out.

Teddy boys on one side, punks on the other.

And they punch each other and scream and it was like anarchy.

England in the mid-to-late '70s was an incredibly violent place.

You went to school, you got hit. You went home, you got it.

-Officers could hit you.

-And of course, you had skinheads.

They would actually wait at the station for people to come

off that train and give them a good hiding.

My dad used to carry a big monkey wrench in his car and

if someone cut him up, he'd get out and they'd have fights.

Everyone talked about the Millwall brick, which was

a rolled-up newspaper that you'd jam into someone's throat.

I remember the atmosphere of constant violence and it

could erupt at any moment. It was everywhere.

Thugs didn't really need much of a reason to lash out.

Seeing someone not being manly was a red flag.

It wasn't a gay-friendly time. It was a world away,

as far as gay rights and gay consciousness goes.

Walk around the way that I did, knowing that there were loads

of people that wanted to punch my face in. Straight blokes,

just because they didn't like the fact you were dressed up,

rock 'n' roll guys that didn't like the fact you were a punk rocker.

There were so many people that wanted to punch you.

Old ladies would hit you with their handbags.

This is such a timeless record.

# Your face when sleeping...

# Is sublime... #

In the safety of my own home, I could listen to music by people who

not only said being different was OK, it might actually be better.

# Then comes pancake factor number one... #

The most famous track on this album at the time

was Walk On The Wild Side.

I think it was just really revolutionary, that song.

# Holly came from Miami FLA... #

Bowie, Lou Reed and Nico evoked Bohemia.

They took us to racy places where the lights were low

and the company was dubious.

# She says hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side

# I said hey, honey, take a walk on the wild side... #

Since I was 14, I'd been trawling London's West End with the red bus rover.

If you're a London adolescent and you want action,

you gravitate to Soho.

Certainly back then, there were all the sex shops, the prostitutes.

There were people offering you drugs.

You don't necessarily want to sample it but it's

a very exciting atmosphere, illicit atmosphere.

Soho wasn't the suburbs.

It was full of dodgy adults but also freaks like me.

The beautiful and the dammed, kids on the run and on the game.

Philip Sallon was the queen of everything, La Reine Du Drame.

He would dress you up and dress you down.

He was my teacher and my tormentor.

One of the first places I ever went to with Philip Sallon was this

place that was called Madame Louise's. There's still a peephole

and you come up, knock and they would open the little shutter,

give you the once over and then you'd either get in or not get in.

Hello.

Philip was a huge influence on me as a kid.

I mean, he was the first bone fide eccentric that I ever met.

Not just in the way that he dressed, but in the way that he thought.

Oh.

Well, it's changed here.

The same size, but just different, isn't it?

This was the dance floor here, anyway.

I remember the DJ was in that corner.

We came down here

and I remember we sat down over there.

That was the seats there.

And we were, like, looking at the dance floor.

It was all full of blokes dancing.

There were all these blokes in suits and ties and everything.

And it turned out the whole lot of them were women.

There wasn't one man there!

We'd been fooled!

I remember Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols,

I used to start signing them in, I think it was every week.

The King's Road trendies, they started moving in bit by bit.

And as they moved in, the lesbos moved out.

So you could say I was responsible for the death of Louise's.

This is where people like Siouxsie Sioux, Johnny Rotten,

Billy Idol came.

I suppose the attraction was the kind of mix of people, you know.

It was all so wrong and so right.

Philip dragged me through the looking glass into Wonderland.

I wanted to go, because gay clubs were full of lumberjacks,

and straight clubs were equally vanilla.

People forget...

that you had to wear a shirt and tie and beige

to get into most clubs pre, you know, pre the '80s.

Maybe a gig to go to and then you'd have to sort of scurry around

and try and find somewhere to go after,

so you'd end up at the Sombrero or Louise's.

The only clubs that were interesting were the gay clubs,

cos they were quite glamorous, and real stars people would come there.

In those days, you were just wandering aimlessly

and then you met someone like Philip Sallon,

and he took you into your crowd, and then you felt comfortable.

And there were all this kind of, like,

"He was a she and she said,

" 'Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side.' "

So, you were young and you wanted to experience things and get out.

Even under the protection of my freak godfather,

the gay underworld was dangerous.

There were drinks and drugs and predators.

Soho was frisky and often risky.

And some people really didn't love their neighbour.

Equal rights does not entitle nig-nogs to move next door.

Ahh!

Love Thy Neighbour was hideous.

I mean, once that was on, the next day at school,

you would get slaughtered by people verbally.

I wish to make a complaint against a nig-nog.

It was all that "nig-nog this" and...

And then people would just repeat it in school

and not even think about it.

-Are they treating you all right, Sambo?

-Oh, no complaints.

-What was this one?

-Love Thy Neighbour.

-Yeah.

You blackies are well catered for

when it comes to handling yourselves.

I couldn't understand racism.

I think that's the thing about the '70s.

We weren't aware of how wrong it was.

When I was a kid, things like Love Thy Neighbour, those types of shows,

I really would never watch them.

To me, it was like the opposite of everything I wanted to be.

It's only in hindsight that I'm aware of the language that was used.

But then, you know, you'd hear it at school.

You know, it was very common.

In the '70s, it was more the sort of Indian kids

that would get picked on.

I remember seeing, like, Indian kids having their turbans pulled off

and all of that, and that used to really upset me.

I mean, Jamaican kids were tough,

so nobody bothered the Jamaican kids at school,

cos they just hit you!

# On a wonderful day like today

# I defy any cloud to appear in the sky... #

If my grandmother came to stay,

she'd want to watch the Black And White Minstrel Show,

which is just kind of, like, mind-boggling.

# She was afraid to come out in the open... #

Those of you who like a bit of irony will enjoy hearing

that this was one of the first programmes broadcast in colour.

It was once the most popular show on TV.

But by the mid-'70s, people wanted something a bit more sophisticated.

-I'm sick!

-Oh, dear.

I'm working at the moment... not anywhere at all.

They called this light entertainment.

But to fascists, this was reality TV.

We'll carry on marching like a great army

towards the Britain of our dreams.

CHEERING

-CHANTING:

-National Front. National Front.

I was never nationalistic.

My colours were red, gold and green.

I was for inclusion, not exclusion.

But apparently, plenty of people thought Britain

was being swamped by immigrants.

Right-winger Enoch Powell

was the most popular politician in Britain.

He won BBC Man of the Year twice.

You had to learn how to run.

People would just come up and punch you in the face, spit at you,

throw things out of cars at you.

I'm the daughter of a Hungarian man.

I was considered "foreign".

I remember our next-door neighbours didn't talk to us

for, like, ten years.

I can remember being on the train and all the football fans got on

and everyone was abusing us.

They were even getting their children to abuse us.

Lewisham was proper rough in the '70s,

but it was also a place of contradictions.

You had people giving out National Front leaflets,

you had a big black community.

-CHANTING:

-National Front. National Front.

As a gay man, I was well aware of the National Front,

and they had one of their biggest ever marches here in Lewisham.

It was, like, the biggest turnout for them ever in the '70s,

which was quite scary,

because after they got rid of the foreigners, we were next.

-MAN:

-Immigration.

-CROWD:

-No.

-MAN:

-Repatriation.

-CROWD:

-Yes.

The National Front tried to incite the working class,

fuelling bitterness and division.

To me and my friends, the minorities under attack

gave this country something wonderful.

They were also our classmates.

My secondary school was like the United Nations,

and thanks to my dad, our house was like the Culture Club.

I didn't grow up in a racist household. My dad was a builder.

So this house was just full of, like, Jamaicans, Indians,

every type of person.

-I'd come down sometimes to get breakfast...

-Yeah.

..and the kitchen would be full of...

like, cast of thousands, you know.

It was funny, I'd kind of walk into the kitchen with blue hair

and there'd be, like, a Rasta sitting there, having a cup of tea.

MUSIC: Everything I Own by Ken Boothe

Reggae, for me, began with Ken Boothe, Everything I Own,

which I went on to have a hit with myself years later.

Things like Susan Cadogan, Hurt So Good.

MUSIC PLAYS

# First you take my heart in the palm of your hands

# And you squeeze it tight... #

Reggae is so much a part of growing up in Britain.

It's important as, you know, curry.

As soon as I heard, like, lovers rock in the '70s,

it just clicked with me.

You know what I mean? I was just like...

Just got it straightaway.

MUSIC: Stir It Up

Lovers rock was a very London kind of reggae sound.

In Birmingham, they made something harder, more righteous.

I moved up there in 1979, but not for the music.

I had a broken heart and a kind offer from a fellow freak.

MUSIC: Love Missile F1-11 by Sigue Sigue Sputnik

In the '80s, Martin Degville would go into orbit

with Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

# There goes my love rocket red... #

Back then, he was just a weirdo from Walsall.

Martin was one of the most outrageous people I'd ever met,

who was wearing stiletto heels and these big footballer shoulder pads.

He looked like an Alsatian from outer space!

I first set eyes on Martin at the seaside.

I was in Bournemouth, wandering around the street,

and I saw this thing across the road.

# Shoot it up! #

And I just targeted him.

I was like, "I've got to make friends with him."

Now, guys, this is Goodall Street, where I used to live.

I fell out with this bloke I was going out with

and it sort of got nasty,

and so I asked Martin if I could go and stay with him in Walsall

for a few weeks, which turned into almost a year.

This is the fabulous place...

It was a fantastic time.

That used to be George's space.

For me, I think Martin's one of the real original kind of freaks.

You know, he kind of changed things. He was quite important, I think.

He was also part of my kind of freak education!

Hello!

Now the area's gone posh. It's a curtain shop.

In 1979, it was far less luxurious.

So this was my part.

And down here was George's part.

I was like the housemaid. I used to clean the place.

You know, all my parties, people coming and going,

orgies.

Martin had a shop in the Bullring called Degville's Dispensary,

and I worked there pretty much every day

while he made clothes.

I used to keep all my takings from the shop...

one of the floorboards in my bedroom.

And so one day I came back

and the whole of my takings had disappeared.

He didn't pay very much, so I used to sort of steal

from under the floorboards to sort of, you know...

pop up my wages a bit.

It would've been around here. It was quite a lot, as well.

£200, £300 at that time.

# You've gotta pick a pocket or two!

# You've gotta pick a pocket or two, boy... #

I demand the living wage!

# You've got to pick a pocket or two. #

The flat was always full of music.

Bowie, Lou Reed, Cabaret Voltaire, Linton Kwesi Johnson,

and, of course, the local speciality.

SKA MUSIC PLAYS

I used to listen to a lot of ska music.

You know, like the Trojan, like, collections.

You know, I took him to see reggae bands,

you know, UB40, you know, being one of them.

I remember going to see UB40 at the Crown in Birmingham,

and also to see The Beat.

There was this kind of marriage of reggae and punk.

You'd see bands like Steel Pulse,

you know, and then you had characters like Jah Wobble.

With his first release, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me,

it had really sort of, like, you know, big reggae undertones to it,

you know, which I know sort of, like, I probably inspired him.

Back in London, the heat was going out of punk.

What happened with punk,

quite quickly it became a mainstream style

and lots of lads came in.

All the moshing started.

It was fairly grim.

And so I could understand why somebody like George

got fed up with it.

My friend Marilyn had been a punk princess, poop poopy doo.

Together we watched the glamour evaporate.

I remember going to a punk gig. It was Gang Of Four.

I was doing this kind of Siouxsie Sioux look.

I had, like, the frilly shirt and heavy make-up and the spiky hair.

But it wasn't really punk. It was something more than punk.

And I remember somebody throwing a beer over me

and kind of ruining my hair.

And I suddenly thought, "Well, this is not a scene I want to be part of.

"This is just not for me."

So there were people that were into punk

that kind of had a lot of fun with it to begin with,

then it became very sort of studenty, violent, spitting,

all of that, pogoing,

and then we kind of departed over here.

There was this kind of a lull in the scene

and there didn't seem to be anything going on.

It seemed like a sort of page was turning.

You started seeing parodies of it on television,

maybe Freddie Starr or people dressed up like a punk.

Then we kind of knew it was dying.

There was a sort of new wave of people coming through.

So here we are in Meard Street,

which is this little road between Wardour Street and Dean Street,

and this is a legendary place for a few reasons.

Over there on the left used to be a very famous kind of brothel

called the Golden Girls Club.

All the hookers used to hang out of the window and scream at us

when we used to walk by.

And then here, the doorway of the legendary nightclub - Billy's.

This was a rundown 1970s club

that Steve Strange and Rusty Egan took over on Tuesday night

and turned into this one-nighter event.

And this sort of phenomena started in the '70s

with people like Steve and Rusty, Chris Sullivan,

taking over these rundown clubs that no-one was going to any more

and putting on these sort of nights for our crowd.

This was only open for 12 weeks.

It was the shortest lifespan of any of those clubs.

It's been more than three decades since club runner Rusty Egan

went down these stairs.

I printed up some flyers, Tuesday night, 10.30 till 3.30am,

and we gave them, personally, to people.

What have they done to my club?

Turned it into a kitchen.

Wow. 1978.

Yeah, it was only about this big.

You would walk into here, 10, 10.30,

maybe Kraftwerk playing,

Bowie, some really down, ambient music.

Probably looked like the bar from Star Wars. Ha!

A collection of people which included Boy George.

Philip Sallon, Steve Strange were the reception.

And there were some alcoves, some little alcoves you could get into.

And then the DJ was against the far wall.

It got very popular. Overcrowded, in fact.

You met some of those people that you might have seen at David Bowie,

you might have seen at a Siouxsie gig,

you might have seen at X-Ray Spex.

And then me in the DJ booth

playing all their favourite Bowie and Roxy,

and then dropping Human League.

First ever... Electricity by OMD.

Emergent electronica.

It was nice to start hearing the Human League

and all these new bands that were coming out.

The soundtrack reflected what we were interested in.

Snapping away and recalling history was art student Nicola Tyson.

I'd just get the prints developed at Boots

and then bring them down the following week

and try and sell them for beer money.

But that wasn't very successful.

Up here there's pictures of George, I think that's with Andy.

There's Steve Strange.

I can't remember exactly where I met George,

although he would come to Billy's in sort of white Pan Stik make-up.

Here we've got Marilyn with a kind of Jordan hairdo.

Philip Sallon. Philip's policeman's hat.

Little Simon Le Bon one there.

There's Andy Polaris.

You slowly start seeing individuals influencing each other

with hair colour, more extreme make-up.

And I think probably as well,

people started seeing people who were like,

"Oh, they actually look a bit better than me.

"Next week when I come down there,

"my hair's going to be three colours, not one colour."

Billy's itself was sort of almost like a clip joint.

The trans contingent of regulars that would go down there.

Living the nightlife to the full

sometimes meant missing the last train or bus back to the suburbs.

Luckily for us, the '70s were the squat years.

In the mid-'70s, London was very rundown, quite poor.

Old property going to be pulled down.

And then the money arrived.

In that gap, you had the emergence of squatting.

Here we are in Carburton Street.

Now, this street was full of these beautiful Georgian houses

that had been demolished

and they built this, which is such a tragedy,

but this is where we squatted.

This corner here was our squat.

And we lived here for about a year and a half in this house

with various characters, you know.

And one of those characters is over here.

THEY LAUGH

And this is the doorway where we did our famous picture.

-Do you want to do your pose?

-I can't remember what it is.

I think I was just like that and you were going...

You were doing one of your Marilyn poses.

I first met Marilyn in 1977.

We've been friends for 40 years, falling in, falling out,

falling in, falling out!

-Do you remember the cute guys that used to live round here?

-Yeah.

Yeah! These ones.

So, this corner house was the sort of second location where we moved

but, originally, we lived just along here.

We were somewhere here.

And I lived on the first floor.

And one of the funny things about me

was that I had two rooms on the first floor,

and I rented one of my rooms out to some French bloke.

I was like a landlady. It was genius.

And people would say, "How can you squat and make someone pay rent?"

I said, "Well, he wants somewhere to live."

So I was very enterprising.

My parents kind of came up to drop off some shopping,

cos they worried about me.

They brought food one night.

My dad brought a credit card and he kind of undid the lock

and he put food in the cupboard.

But I'd kind of decorated my bedroom with all these naked photos of men,

so my mum and dad left me a note - "Lovely wallpaper."

Do you remember that outside toilet?

That had no roof on it, so you'd be in the toilet

and people would be up at the windows, throwing things

and going, "How long are you going to be?"

And it's just like, "Oh, God!"

We had no water, but we had electricity

cos my boyfriend managed to kind of fix the wires, and so we had lights.

There was two brothers that lived just up here,

and they had hot water.

And I went out with one of the brothers.

-And I went out with the other one.

-Dave.

-And Steven. Steve.

-David and Steven. And we used to go to their house to have baths.

-Yeah!

And when we couldn't go there to have baths,

we'd go to the hotel sometimes and wash in the toilets.

-And this is where we lived for about a year or so.

-Not this.

-No, it was much nicer than this.

-Mm.

-Yeah.

It was bonkers.

We were growing up, or trying to.

Punk had been a beautiful distraction, but we were moving on.

It was still all about dressing up, but now we wanted glamour,

tungsten lighting, punks in paint.

Clubbing, you know, living hand-to-mouth,

getting up at two in the afternoon, putting your face on, going out.

You know, it was... It was a very hedonistic time.

People were expressing themselves in a different way

that was very stark.

I just wanted to be myself and express myself,

you know, the way I looked, my creativity.

There was a feeling of anything goes.

In terms of style, we were fearless.

It was never about just one look.

Variety was the vice of life.

I would see sort of Roman gladiators, men in capes.

I can remember my brother getting arrested wearing hot pants,

plastic sandals and a space gun.

You couldn't afford to make stuff with nice lace like that.

-Where did you get that?

-It's my nan's.

Philip Sallon, he would go out in a wedding dress.

When you go out with Philip, like, on the town,

he would, like, bring bags of clothes

and he'd constantly be changing outfits.

It got to the point where I was turning up with suitcases

and changing all night long.

I know it's tragic.

Green eyeshadow, green blusher and green lips.

Being first with the look was vital.

Even dear friends like Jeremy Haysi Fantayzee Healy

would become a sworn enemy if you stole their eyebrows

or their hairdo.

It was very, like, competitive.

If you copied something that someone else had done...

-Oh, they'd cut you.

-Fights.

-Cut your clothes off.

-Drinks thrown.

-Spitting.

And what about the kilt? There was this one time...

-Yeah, but that's you.

-No, but you as well.

There was that time... Remember when you got dreadlocks?

-Yeah.

-Who had them first?

-Jeremy.

-No!

THEY LAUGH

I would be in a club and somebody would kind of go,

"I think Boy George is coming tonight,"

and there would be excitement, like, "What's he wearing?"

George used make-up in such a sort of striking way.

You can see all those, like, inspirations

from the glamour moment, from the Bowie moment,

from the Lindsay Kemp moment.

He'd be dressed as a nun, something like that!

We didn't call ourselves New Romantics.

That was the sort of newspaper term.

But it was a small scene with a massive ego.

200 people at the most.

But really publicity hungry, you know,

we wanted people to know about us.

But it wasn't a lot of people, you know,

in terms of its kind of cultural impact.

It kind of grew into what we did in the '80s,

all the bands, you know, Duran Duran in Birmingham,

Culture Club, Spandau Ballet.

It grew into something bigger, you know.

But actually, the root of it was this tiny little crowd of people

who were sort of full of their own self-importance.

Of which I was one!

You've changed!

In February '79, we had somewhere new to go.

Steve Strange and Rusty Egan's new club - the Blitz.

Steve was brutal on the door.

Talk about kill to dress.

It's about fashion, it's about looks.

I mean, the men dress outrageous, the women dress outrageous.

Spending hours dressing up beforehand.

Steve would be at the door looking you up and down.

Whatever their look is, they've got to have a look to get through the door.

So when you went into this club,

I'd be playing Warszawa, you know, the B-side of Low.

You know, "mmmmm-uhhh".

People like Siouxsie Sioux strutting about,

Jordan, obviously, Soo Catwoman,

like, all these people who looked just incredible.

It got busier and busier and busier, and then I'd play...

Duh-dunnn!

MUSIC: Being Boiled by The Human League

OK, are you ready?

HE MIMICS THE BEAT

# Listen to the voice of Buddha... # The Human League.

And that was it - they started to dance. "Oh, the beat."

And it was like a soundtrack. It was like, "Yes!"

Telex, Kraftwerk, Human League, Ultravox, Lou Reed, David Bowie,

loads of Bowie, more Bowie, more Roxy, Siouxsie And The Banshees.

Dun dun dun dun-dun-d... Yeah, we'll have that.

You know, Marc Bolan, yeah, we'll have that.

So, basically, I sort of mixed and matched the best of the cultures.

Almost everybody was either an artist, a fashion designer

or they were in a band.

People who all had big dreams, big ambition,

and drive, and were networking.

It was multicultural, it was multisexual.

A quite extreme core of people looking to the future.

The future had suddenly arrived. It was time to get to work.

All of my friends were, like, getting jobs.

Everyone around me was like, "What's he going to do?"

And I was just doing... Carrying on doing what I'd been doing

and sort of slowly realising,

"Actually, this isn't going to work. I need to get a job."

When it came, it was a job I was perfect for.

In fashion.

I worked in this place here

as a... more as a window dresser, really,

and wannabe shop assistant.

This was called Street Theatre, and it was very different.

It was like a kind of quasi punk, New Romantic shop.

Lots of frilly shirts, lots of sort of, you know, tartan bondage,

all that kind of stuff.

But it was packed with clothes.

Literally, you couldn't move for clothes rails.

I think you could say we sold too much!

And this shop was owned by a man called Peter Small,

who was my kind of mentor.

He really supported me.

You know, I basically talked myself into a job here.

Peter was a rag trade visionary.

As far as he was concerned, my freakiness was an asset.

He loved my eye for design and he really encouraged me.

He was like the great teacher I never had at school.

He also had a shop here that was a mod shop.

And there's a great photo, a really famous photo,

of me doing the windows in the mod shop,

because I kind of helped them out sometimes as well.

I did my first proper TV interview when I worked for Peter.

I did a show called Something Else.

Yeah, he was such a supporter.

He was so important to the beginning of my career, really.

It was 1980.

In a few months, I would be starting Culture Club.

Martin would start Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

For now, we were just fodder for the TV freak shows.

You do dress outrageously, though. Why do you dress like that?

Because I want to. That's it, you know.

Clothes should be fun and not taken too seriously at all.

But it was my clothes that got me noticed by Malcolm McLaren.

I was really good friends with Matthew Ashman,

who was the guitarist in Bow Wow Wow.

And he heard me singing and was like,

"Oh, you should be in Bow Wow Wow,

"maybe we could have an extra singer,"

and suggested it to Malcolm,

who saw the potential in maybe upsetting Annabella

by having me in the band.

So there was this big gig planned for the Rainbow Theatre

in Finsbury Park.

Back in the day, this was actually a really happening place for gigs.

And I had come here to see Bow Wow Wow.

And Malcolm decided to have me sing.

A few songs had gone by, and suddenly it was announced

that somebody else was going to come and sing - Lieutenant Lush.

In the encore, instead of Annabella coming back out, I came out.

So, on they come.

I remember being really frightened before I went on

and then getting pushed on the stage.

And I'm actually saying to my mates, "Wait a minute.

"That... That's... Isn't that Boy George?"

There was lots of booing and, like, "Who's that?" and I sang this song.

And he's actually got a really great voice.

Not as you'd expect.

It was soft and gentle and sort of like honey.

I remember doing my thing and just loving it.

You know, loving it.

We were all transfixed, and that was a bit of a moment.

That was really the beginning of me thinking, "I need to put a band together."

You know, people from Eltham just didn't become famous.

It just wasn't... It was just like...

"You know, you're not going to really ever be a singer.

"You can sing all you like,

"but you're never going to make a living out of that."

MUSIC: Church Of The Poison Mind by Culture Club

Culture Club came from some shambolic rehearsals

with some musicians I'd heard of who had the right look.

Only Jon Moss really knew anything about the business,

and we followed him.

Our tone was light and melodic. Music to fall in love to.

And the world seemed to do just that.

The fourth single went straight to number one.

MUSIC: Do You Really Want To Hurt Me by Culture Club

I used to joke it was the day I married the world.

One day I could walk round the streets, like, in full regalia

and nobody would take a blind bit of notice.

And then overnight I was instantly recognisable

and I couldn't go anywhere.

The rest is history,

but we're in the '80s now, so we can't talk about this!

He was a classic British pop star.

He was absolutely huge worldwide.

He was cuddly.

But then also with George, with his tongue, there was always an edge.

And he was always involved in some kind of social change,

which is what the best pop stars always are.

MUSIC: Everything I Own by Culture Club

I feel very lucky that I grew up in the '70s,

that that was where I got my musical education.

MUSIC: Generations Of Love by Boy George

There was a wonderful separation between the establishment

and, you know, certain types of music.

You know, you'd never be able to have punk rock now.

They wouldn't allow it.

It would be in an advert for Gap within two weeks.

Before the '70s, everyone knew the world was full of gays,

but they were forced into hiding.

My generation burst out of the closet and danced for joy.

I started the decade with no interest in politics

and ended up as some sort of symbol, maybe a question mark.

Sometimes the most political act is just being yourself.

I hope me and my freaky friends moved the debate on.

As for current affairs, it's all Bowie's fault.

For everything else, I blame the parents.

Big parts of history were created and made in the '70s.

But when you're in it, you don't think about it.

You're just living it.

You know, history only makes sense in hindsight anyway.

You look back and you go, "Wow!"

You know, cos you've got nothing to compare it with.

But now you look back and think the '70s were just, like, bonkers!

MUSIC: 20th Century Boy by T.Rex

# Friends say it's fine Friends say it's good

# Everybody says it's just like Robin Hood... #