international news _ 4th July, 2006
Boy George's Rubbish Punishment
Text by Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
80s pioneer and clubland icon Boy George has been sentenced to work five days for New York's Sanitation Department for his community service sentence he received after cops discovered cocaine in his apartment last October.
"He is scheduled to start with us several weeks from now," said sanitation department spokesman Keith Mellis told local reporters, "To be honest, we're not certain exactly what he's going to do. We'll have to wait and see. We'll work out some type of daily operation."
The infamous gender bender enraged trial Judge Anthony Ferrara two weeks previously after failing to pay his $1,000 fine and claiming street cleaning would be 'demeaning' prompting the judge to issue a blood-curdling threat.
"It's up to you as to whether it will be an exercise in humiliation or an exercise in humility. If you do community service, you go out that door," the Judge told him, "I'm going to make you a promise. If you don't do this community service, you go through the back door (to prison)," he warned. (San Francisco Chronicle).
This time round George accepted his punishment gracefully quipping, "I don't care about doing cleaning up. My mum was a cleaner. I've always been a scrubber." (AP) and is expected to carry out his sentence by the end of August.
His punishment comes two and a half years after he moved to New York to oversee the launch of his musical Broadway when he told Skrufff he was delighted to be based in the City, not least for the boost it brought to his love life.
"I arrived in New York thinking if it's anything like my pulling potential in England then it'll be a fucking disaster, but I've had a few sexual encounters, mostly confused straight blokes or highly closeted characters," he laughed at the time, and also recalled the City's excesses when Culture Club first took off there 25 years ago.
"Back in the 80s, you'd walk up to people in clubs and say 'Hello, do you want to have sex with me?' and they would- whether in the toilets or back at the hotel. It was a very drug-fuelled, hedonistic time, when people used to just throw themselves at you, and you'd throw yourself at them. It was all about quick fixes and quick highs, that was how sex was dealt with back then," said George.
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