Boy George - The House That Made Me

[Music] imagine going back to the house where you grew up with everything inside exactly as it used to be some familiar faces are going to do exactly that [Music] oh my god i'm back in the 70s this week boy george confronts his past so funny how like a simple thing like a picture that's i just remember that but it's not a set is it it's not a movie it's a real thing all my attempts to not be like my dad i failed because i am basically a gay version of my dad [Music] go on to the left kiddo mind that boss [Music] since the 1980s boy george has had number one hits in more than a dozen countries and his albums have gone platinum 10 times over the years he's also made headlines for addiction and arrests a lot of my life feels like it happens to someone else whether it's the success i have the culture club or even things like going to prison it really feels like did that happen to me for the first time in over 30 years he's going back to the house where he grew up in south east london i think it's going to be really interesting experience for me i would never dare go and knock on the door and say i used to live here can i come in i would say that i'm in a kind of transitional period in my life and in my career there was a time when i really just wanted nothing to do with the past the biggest change for me is that i got recovery you know and you put as much effort into staying sober as you did into getting wasted what happens is you start remembering stuff this is all becoming very familiar now bus stop many a miserable hour spent waiting there for a bus here's my hideous school we're getting closer we're getting closer [Music] george allen o'dowd grew up on the middle park estate in elton well it just seems a bit pushing now built in the 1930s it was part of a massive wave of housing construction during the interwar years that gave rise to 4.3 million new homes nationwide everyone knew everyone's business you know everybody had the same sort of curtains these houses had three small bedrooms outside toilets and no central heating they were typical of the council houses of the time my friend boyd used to live in that house over there he had all he was talking about this guy he's having loads of records my my so we used to call my aunt heather used to live next door there they used to be um i think the hooker called call a dracula we used to live in that house with a sort of darker brown door i knew the people that lived here they were really nice of an older couple um they were just like it was really hello they weren't here [Applause] number 29 joan crescent was george's home until he was 14 years old using personal photos and family testimony the living room is the first place that's been taken back to exactly how it was in 1971 seeing the forgotten past brought back to life can have a profound emotional impact and this will be the first time george has set foot in his house for 35 years oh my god beside us [Music] [Music] so funny how like a simple thing like a picture that is so funny because that's i just remember that and uh oh my god and the wallpaper remember that i just feel like wow oh swan vestas number six oh my god you know can you imagine like all the people used to smoke in this room really like toxic cigarettes just awful who lived here my mother and father jerry and diane and my brothers richard kevin gerald david me and my sister siobhan all in this little house mental [Laughter] absolutely mental the o'dowds were a large irish catholic family george's mum had moved from dublin to london after becoming an unmarried mother it was here she met her husband jerry o'dowd a builder george's father died in 2004. [Music] what's right is the kind of mood of this place i mean i just remember it was full of smoke and anxiety and screaming and you know all sorts of unpredictable things i wouldn't say that it kind of comes without feelings of happiness you know at all [Music] my dad was a really extreme person he was quite explosive quite violent sometimes i remember my dad kind of shouted him saying this is my ass he had a lot of that you know i remember my mum had her first driving lesson from this house my mum would kind of come out and it's quite nice you know smart outfits going for a first driving test and my dad had kind of lost it and accused her of having an affair with the driving shots you should never met and my dad chased the guy down the road so the guy left his car on the grass and ran down the road and sort of wouldn't come back until my dad had calmed down so this house brings back all those memories for me but the thing that really contextualizes this whole room is this picture sort of weeping baby she said a lot about what was going on all the time really [Music] it's much nicer outside let's go come on but you were so looking forward to coming in here i know i was expecting something very different and i was really nervous about it you know but it's um yes maybe quite emotional come on let's go see you later although george's home has been taken back in time some important items from his past are missing over the next few days he'll track them down and explore what they meant to his life but the following morning george is having doubts and how are you feeling about going back there today are we going back there today to where though you're doing presents um that's not going to make me very happy after today not because i don't want it's just we've done it it's like why am i going back to the house start filming this stuff this one is a very famous house because boy george lives here sometimes it's completely covered with boy george we love you and i love your music boy george and they have to clean them every day boy george is taking a trip back in time to explore how he became the man he is today right come on leave it's been an unsettling process but he's going to continue his teenage home has been recreated but some important items are missing he's seeking them out to explore how they shaped his life music journalist charles char murray has something george hasn't seen in over 30 years check this out george's very first record player one of those ones you piled them up right yeah it was the nearest you could get to doing a mix in those days you could stack up half a dozen singles and that was the only way you could choose a sequence of music and that was the same record's over yeah and remember my mom banging on the ceiling with the broom to turn it down i think with this ancient technology you had a kind of physical relationship with the bit of plastic that carried the music i mean now music is phantom it's bits and bytes and that's something you download and it's on your computer or on your ipod and it's not a physical thing that you hold in your hand and i think that almost affects the way you relate to the music itself yeah and also escape escapism it was a gateway into a magic world though absolutely it's like having a little tardis in your bedroom you know especially if you had the right records that was perfect for escaping domestic drama and the grimness of suburbia well i think this is about to set off on its travels so listening good health children thank you very much charles nice to meet you and you once again it's heavy i don't know why we don't have these anymore george's record player was made in the 1950s it was given to him by his dad who'd found it whilst clearing out a house he was rebuilding [Music] another sound quality is appalling but i probably wouldn't have noticed that back then as george got older there was one person that he looked to for inspiration get ready welcome to hell his big brother richard is your worst nightmare lovely how small is this room i can't remember it being this small how the hell did we live in this tiny space six of us oh do you know what i really don't know it is so weird everything is unbelievable richard had followed their dad into the family building trade and had the money to buy his own records what's this rod that's rod stewart every picture tells a story he was a real rod freak and richard just had the hair and everything except the rods [Applause] [Music] bit of a long intro and all froze everyone at a concert [Music] [Music] i remember richard went to see what's shooting their faces at nourishment [Laughter] it was also through his brother that george discovered someone who'd changed his life i remember hearing this door my age went off ahead hit some tiny children [Music] soldier with a just those lyrics yeah i mean because there maybe wasn't anyone else making records like that no no no no one made a record and you could listen to it and think you know what the hell was that all about see i was the opposite i think i knew what it was about would you do this when you were a kid no not so no because he's like kind of a few steps ahead of me yeah so i'd get the kind of i get thrown a few things like a bit of what i mean i remember when i was working on a job and mum phoned me up and said like oh have you seen george in the paper i remember opening a daily mirror and i didn't know i mean i didn't know you sort of changed your look and done what you was doing so anyway i got back to the job and there was a couple of lads there who knew me and one of them's gone is that your brother and i went no i said i hate it i said it's another bloke called joe dowd i thought i don't want all the blokes on the site knowing you're me brother people find it hard to grasp that you that you ain't you know you're not in in character all the time but we all know when you get a little bit moody and a little bit um leave you alone you're getting into your boy george character yeah he didn't realize we knew that i think what happens when you become famous with all the best intentions of the world do you think oh i won't change i'll be normal you know i'm just going to be the same person but when people start treating you differently you do change yeah you're up your own ass definitely i think up until just a few years back you didn't appreciate what you had and what you've done and i think that's why you sort of went a bit off the road you know i mean personally myself i wouldn't swap my life with your life but you're no good at woodwork anyway i mean george's four brothers followed their dad into the building trade i'll see you later bye but george was set on a different path ziggy played guitar jamming [Music] david bowie grew up in the suburbs of bromley just four miles away from george but his creation ziggy stardust was an alien rock star from another galaxy to this day bowie remains one of the top 10 biggest selling british musicians of all time [Music] i didn't know what time it was and the lights were alone i leaned back on my radio some cat was [Music] in the days before mtv top of the pops was one of the only ways young music fans ever got to see their idols in action it was the cultural event of the week attracting audiences of 15 million twice that of coronation street [Music] bowie's 1972 appearance has gone down in pop history when boeing came along it was like he made it okay to be a freak he said he was bisexual which was really shocking he was like oh my god so that's how that make once and you know just so many things and going to school the next day and everyone talking about it [Music] [Applause] [Music] by 1972 homosexuality had been decriminalized for just five years bowie only put his arm around his guitarist but the gesture caused outcry i mean a lot of people kind of slagged off by saying he was bisexual and he really wasn't but i just think what he did was so powerful for gay people at a time when nobody was doing it [Music] i wouldn't be the person i am without having discovered though of course it shaped a lot of my life [Music] it's very easy to look back and rewrite history so well i knew what i wanted to be and i knew i was going to be famous and because i didn't i think when i was a kid you know i knew i was different i knew i was weird people told me i was old and i got called names all the time at home at school everywhere so i knew i was an outsider you know and then when i was a teenager i kind of wore the uniform of an outsider and then you know later in my teens it was when i started i mean i'd always loved music and i'd always kind of wanted to be loved i would say not not famous i would say i wanted to be loved more than fame and i suppose i associated being famous of being loved teenage george spent every moment of his spare time listening to music but his father and brothers had a very different passion boxing ran in the odell blood and dad's ambition was to have a family of fighters [Music] remember these they dance he used to take us in the back room and get us all sparring together only george's younger brother gerald went the distance and became a professional boxer the boys have come back to their old club when i was a kid this would have been a totally intimidating environment for me mum and my dad kind of bringing me usually i was quite good at you know listening to my very records yeah but it was dad's passion it made him light up when he talked about boxing or if he was injured it was almost like as if you were doing all the things he couldn't yeah yeah the reason i came here was because i was playing football and dad said and that's him and dad said he's got a good punch in him and dad said it'd be good training for you what i've realized he was a product of his time you know dad had a bad temper um and you had to you had to watch yourself sometimes you know but then you know he'd lose his temper over something really trivial remember what he did to david he knocked him out yeah over david had got a letter and he said well what is it and david said well it's mine it's nothing to do you and he just knocked him sparkle yeah i just remember kind of standing up to him a lot yeah kind of thinking listen i don't know i can i can remember i can remember you standing up to him i think thinking you keep your mouth shut you know what i mean because no no that was that was never really i was never good at that see the thing with me although i had spent all of my life kind of trying to beat everything that that wasn't yeah i think i ended up being the most liked hand really that thunderous ability to blow off and then when a cup of tea that was yeah that's exactly what he was like the last time i ever really kind of reacted like that was with michael my ex-boyfriend and then we had this massive fight and i remember stopping and going oh my god you know what am i doing and i remember saying this is my house and it was a real classic father comment yeah it's my [ __ ] house all my attempts to not be like my dad have failed because i am basically a gay version of my dad i suppose you know when i went to prison it probably got me through that because you know i'm not some little you know wall flower yeah despite the kind of way i look and the makeup and stuff yeah it wasn't like oh my god with all these ruffians i mean i kind of grew up in a yeah quite boisterous family so you didn't take [ __ ] from anyone no no you didn't i didn't i mean and i think that definitely comes from my dad yeah do you ever draw any parallels between your father's violence and your own life of course yeah i mean you know if you've learned as a kid that the way to sort of deal with an argument is by screaming or throwing something then it becomes kind of normal of course so yeah there was a point for many many years where my relationships i thought they were great relationships because they were really extreme and volatile and emotional and you know always kind of fighting and i thought that was kind of what love was absolutely spending time with his brothers is giving george the chance to think how his family background influenced him after talking to richard and gerald he's meeting his other two brothers to see what they remember oh my god back to hell hello joining george for dinner are kevin and david so what do you reckon i think we've all got a bit bigger that's all right yeah no no i think it's it's just no it's tiny man it's incredible tiny quite kev sorry that's right in the 70s food was pricey taking up twice as much of the family budget as today no stews i mean the thing is oh wow look at that proper stew and george's mum had to feed a family of eight this is like a luxury version of what we used happen which was kev yeah i do remember the food that we ate was fill them up and shut them up food you know you ate what you were given yeah now we had kind of off cuts weren't it off the bone no there was like no off the bone that's posh there was a thing in the butchers you could get sort of not dodgy me squaggons i remember i'm not mistaken you kevin and richard helping yourself to more than what you paid for at the local supermarket oh yeah sure because yeah you used to do one thing that you didn't realize you were smothering but like when you used to walk around in your own things whistling and singing yourself and everybody because there's that mad kid and while he was doing that i was just loading up with chops and like bits of chips big lumps of cheese and things like that i remember there used to be you know the guilt trip of handling stuff you hadn't paid for and then getting on with eating it going for the shopping and knowing that the 10 shillings was all she had and you know like i don't feel guilty about stealing things like that but my mom used to go without food i knew that i knew she used to go out of food i actually i've always liked being in a big family i just remember a lot of laughter i think each generation you know it's like i think siobhan's experience is totally different to our experience you know of here you you kevin and richard certainly had it harder than me geraldine chiffon that's for sure in 1974 the family left this house and moved to a new neighborhood now george is leaving his home again my first day here was quite uncomfortable today hasn't been too bad i think having other people to bounce off has made it a bit more of a pleasant experience but i am looking forward to never coming here again this is a very unusual situation you don't allow for what effect it's going to have on you you think oh yeah i'm going to come back to a set but it's not is it it's a real thing lovely in 1974 the local authority moved george and his family out of the council estates and into this edwardian semi-detached house three miles away what was the neighborhood like round here compared well very difficult [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] um i moved here when i was 14 and when we first got here we couldn't believe this was the house because it was so huge it was massive it was like a palace and it was just very exciting you know it was change again before someone else supports me the second of george's homes has also been taken back in time [Music] [Music] i'm back in the 70s [Music] great wallpaper yeah the wallpaper was dead spot on see this is much better this is much better space these are so cool i had a big obsession with mirror tiles in the seventies [Music] it's great [Music] by the mid 70s george's dad's building business was flourishing and more money was being spent on the home [Music] on the phone there would have been a lock obviously there was a big lock on this but we found out that you could actually pick it up and do like eight eight five three do it like that and he used to work he used to get through to people without using the dial but actually i don't know how we survived there was no mobile phones you only had pay phones and most people to start with didn't have phones in their house back then it was like you made an arrangement and you had to keep to it [Music] but this house just you know nothing but kind of positive memories from this place and also it was a big shift when i moved here i had a massive fight with my dad in this house i ran up the stairs to escape him i went into the bathroom and locked the door my dad literally put his fist through the bathroom it just went okay he was like first of all he was like come out and i was like no i'm not going out and they literally just went woof and the whole door came off can you imagine that terrifying that once i ran through his legs and i as i run through sex i tripped and i fell down the stairs and hit my head on the radio so it was it was a really small little cut but it just bled you know it was like the exorcist i just remember kind of i was like oh my god of me just looking okay look what you've done and running out the house no shoes on i went to my friend's house and i stayed away for about about seven days i didn't come back but i kind of i knew that that was the last time it was the last time i'd ever have a fight with my father i made my mind up [Music] so that was really significant in this house that day i remember thinking i've grown up [Music] this is where my mum came to sew sewing machine is missing from this room [Music] to find his mum's missing machine george has traveled to a craft museum in south london what a mad place [Music] isn't it wonderful what are you doing it's like machine heaven isn't it he's been joined by a fashion historian paul gorman so you're here to find a particular object which you will recognize oh there is that the blue one yeah yeah hey and so what was the first thing you had i could have swore it was a singer but obviously i'm wrong but yeah and i recognized this and what did you have made on it oh god you see my mom about a habit when i came home with things i could make that so i would say go on them all right well she would yeah she would and you just joined the queue you know she was making curtains for someone so i used to give my mom like sort of chair covers oh yes they make me leggings yeah but one of the most spectacular things with these kind of spotty dungarees this is massive great big glitch there's a picture of them in here oh yeah with big black and white spotty dungarees they were quite a triumph i think the thing about that time particularly the early 70s was the fashion was somewhere out there oh yeah absolutely 13 year old pop fan you couldn't dress like pop you could kind of hint at it but you could never really be bowie which is why we went to oxfam shops jumble sales jumbo i've always thought that it came out of that kind of post austerity thing because if you think about most of our parents they came out of that generation which was really made to amend they had to sometimes make their own clothes or copy or make things last and i think we as a generation in a way benefited from that because we grew up with that all around us and so everything was possible last used that sewing machine oh well i think she upgraded it at some point home sewing was huge in the 70s and almost 5 000 machines were sold every week today's recession has reinvigorated the diy trend and sales have gone up a reported 500 percent in the last two years george is heading back to his old home so that his mum dinah can put her old sewing machine to the test [Music] i know how much you love doing these pair of oxfam trousers you to tartar what do you want me to do look at this amazing yeah george and his mum have always had a very close relationship and still speak almost every day that's going to be crocodile so it's not going to be fantastic i'm afraid that wouldn't have been acceptable i mean there were times when i'd kind of get mom to make something and i'd be really like waiting for it to be finished so i could wear it hop from the bakery come on i learned so as a child up in the playground that we used to go to and on saturdays the lady came and showed it out to knit so and dan well i remember actually you made these vivian westwood bondage trousers don't know if you made a pattern no no no i didn't they had to be quite wide to um to put the zips in so the only thing i i the pattern i used was a pajama pattern i actually got collared by vivian somewhere yeah in the in in the late 70s oh yeah where'd you get it because i never made those i said no no you didn't my mom made them so she had a good old look yeah that didn't turn out too bad actually i wouldn't have worn them if they weren't authentic i mean i loved clothes i couldn't wait to get my wages when i was a girl i think if you look at early pictures of you there's a lot of fashion going on a bit of a princess wouldn't you i did buy a dress once and it was a paisley design and your father came in and he went well you're not wearing that's too short do you remember yeah there was a lot of that and i tore it up really yeah i ripped it in a way because dad wouldn't let you dress up that's why you quite liked me dressing up it was almost like i was doing it for her that was the great thing about you and i from when you were about 14 when you told me that you were gay and because i didn't know anything about gay people i didn't know anything about the mechanicals and i said well what do you mean what do you mean and you did say you know i don't like women i like men and i went well i'm not going to shout at ya do you think i'm going to troll you out and you went i don't know and i said no i'm not i think that moment i became more protective of you george's new home was bigger but it still only had three bedrooms from the age of 14 to 19 george shared a room with his two younger brothers [Music] this is the final room that's been transformed [Music] oh my god this was my bed i think there were a few fights about this position but i got it the only thing that's missing why are there no pictures on the wall [Music] this would have been covered in pictures [Music] but yeah i definitely need to decorate this [ __ ] room it's awful gotta give it some personality george is in central london what he's visiting a vintage store to find some of the old magazines that are used to decorate his bedroom walls and for a teenage boy like george in the 1970s there was one favorite publication these were obviously girls magazines but i used to buy them there might be the latest picture of bowie from japan or occasionally i'd find a unknown celebrity that i fancy they'd go on the wall first published in 1964 jackie was an instant hit and remained the biggest selling teen magazine on the market for the next 10 years you know these young chaps here young david essex was gorgeous do you know what i don't really remember boys magazines i mean i'm sure there were some but they weren't of any interest to me i didn't sort of you know look for and with the soccer annuals wasn't it there was also soccer annuals um bubblegum cards you know not it's something that i would even gravitate towards that was always like look see what it was that would have been worth buying jackie for that picture i even had a sweaty wedding poster up once i don't know why i do know what i'm not going to say well i found this shorty ready post and they look like they had really big knobs in it and i did also have a poster of shaking stevens for a while as well i did have a bit of a question shaking on his way back to his teenage home george makes a detour very famous building i would have been 77 i met a man on the tube in italian and um i was invited to a party here when i was a punk i actually lost my virginity here in this place i was [Music] vaguely 16 maybe not 16. i was i think i must have been 16 because i was at work well i mean the thing is this was like in the 70s so there wasn't really any kind of panic about that when we were kids you know safe sex really only came about when aids came about so i think it was probably up there somewhere it's a shame we can't go inside because it's very beautiful flat but apparently it's now owned by opus dei it's a religious organization so apparently they don't want us in there they should have a plaque here shouldn't they this is her boy george lost his cherry love you [Music] quality and that would have been a real prize george has returned to his 70s bedroom in shooters hill to finish bringing the room back to life [Music] very cool [Music] aside from his jackie magazines there was another place where george went to look at men well here we go let's swim in trunks it doesn't really excite me now but it would have done it's very heavy someone has to get down oh my god most gay boys in the 70s fingered through their mother's catalogues because you know a lot of stuff was bought on catalogue and we would have gone straight for the pants section i mean that's yeah it's pretty raunchy i mean obviously now it's it doesn't seem so exciting but these kind of shots would have been quite nice because there wasn't anywhere else to kind of see semi-cloud men so catalogues were quite a good place you know mum's catalogues i lost my virginity to it come have a look they don't look so kind of attractive anymore this is the best oh this i don't think this is the best of the catalogues but obviously not so not so sexy no no it wasn't that page so it wasn't just a gay thing it was no no no straight boys did it as well that went straight to the bra [ __ ] supplied the catalogue let's have a look what you may have yeah look mark bowler he wouldn't remember i would have been very selective about this do you think we could have afforded bluetack foreign [Music] a bit wonky dave that would never have worked look that's exactly how richard had his hair yeah richard looked just like him so what kind of posters would you have had i had trevor brooking trevor brooking's a footballer um i don't think you fancied him no no but yeah we just i can't what did you have you had somebody i was here and i think i probably would have had fair enforcement major how did she look at privacy in here what was that like well george had been privacy because their wardrobes were like that wasn't there but it was there i think that's right yeah so i didn't really know what you got up to behind there nothing um maybe a couple of times you brought some people back no i never had sex in the center no no no no dude you brought friends back and they stayed there was an incident with david he'd obviously had a girlfriend in here right and he'd left the evidence on top of my hat are we doing it mum said it's that your french letter up says and i said as quick as anything i haven't had any post and she looked at me as if he hasn't got a clue what he's talking about and then hit him [Laughter] when george was a teenager the age of consent for gay sex was 21. aged 15 george was stopped at heathrow airports by the police when they discovered he was waiting to meet his boyfriend he was arrested at this point his dad was the only member of the family who didn't know george was gay i just remember george coming in and going straight upstairs and then dad was explaining to mum what had gone on and you know you were really angry do you know what i mean because you were i've been really mistreated by the police yeah they kept calling me names and letting me fall asleep and then waking me up they were trying everything they could to get me to give the name of this guy that i was meeting but i remember the conversation where george we were kind of standing in your corner and dad was in a way he wasn't being nasty he was kind of trying to you know he was worried you were saying this is not something i'm going for and i clearly remember you saying no i'm gay i'm gay and i remember dating you're not gay and you said i am gay he said you're not gay and he said i like [ __ ] [Laughter] i remember clearly getting under the duvet and trying to hold my breath because dad was quite you know he was volatile would be the word you wouldn't actually know whether you're gonna get a smile or a smack with that and what did you say there's nothing that's going well do you know what i mean i personally believe when someone says to you i like cocky not knows you're gonna do about it and that wasn't because no he wasn't but i'm not too sure they knew how to handle having a gay son it wasn't really until i started going live in birmingham with martin and i actually said to mum can i leave you know we cried and it was all that kind of stuff i think that was probably the first time that she kind of accepted it george has traveled in time from 1971 through to 1979 i'd always kind of wanted to be loved i would say not famous and i suppose i associated being famous of being loved [Music] my relationships i thought they were great relations because they were really extreme and volatile and i thought that was kind of what love was all my attempts to not be like my dad failed because i am basically a gay version of my dad [Music] soon george's trip into the past will be over [Music] when you're forced to be in a space that's a replica of a place where you experience lots of awful things then you're obviously going to react strongly to that what you learned by doing this is that you know some things that you thought were really awful weren't that all for maybe going back has allowed me to kind of say oh actually you know there were some great times and i had great friends and yeah you know i was a kid and it wasn't always awful [Music] if i was going to take one of the items it would be the record player because music was such a big part of my life when i was a kid you know my life revolved around music it was the thing that kind of kept me sane it was a thing it's a place that i escaped into you know it was a fantasy realm so you know music's kind of been my salvation all through my life so i'm going to take the record player goodbye i'm really taking it back to the birth of modern dreams in a world of wannabes desperate for fame a cultural icon in

Channel: Culture Club History Boy

Views: 98,663

Keywords: Boy george, Culture club, Life story, Music icon, 1980s music, David Bowie, Music documentary, Musician singer songwriter, Karma chameleon, Boy george and culture club

Id: 1cdS71q6HAM

Length: 45min 40sec (2740 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2022