Boy George says people expect the worst but are pleasantly surprised when they meet him. He tells Steve Pratt that this time he’s going to stay out of trouble as he heads to the North-East for a date as a DJ.

SEVERAL times Boy George begins a sentence with the words “As I’ve got older...”. And before you ask, he’s one year short of his half century.

Age would seem to dictate a name change, but Man George doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it? Besides, despite the passing years, he’s still the same George Alan O’Dowd.

There have been ups and downs. Indeed, his life may be described as exceptionally colourful in an area – the music business – that thrives on outrageous behaviour. George has truly lived the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll lifestyle, but, in the words of the song, he’s always picked himself up, brushed himself down and started all over again.

The message before the interview was that his agent says George doesn’t want to talk about tying up prostitutes. Well, you wouldn’t, would you? It was for the assault and false imprisonment of a gentleman friend that he was jailed in 2008, the latest in a series of brushes with the law. Drugs got him into trouble previously.

So him saying to me that “I’ve had quite a lot of problems over the past few years” is something of an understatement. And yet the public has never rejected George as they have others in the entertainment business who’ve deviated from the legal path.

Perhaps his problem has been being too open about his life, but you get the impression the Boy just can’t help it. He doesn’t try to project an image. “I think I am just myself,” he says.

“At the moment, it’s almost like I’m going around the world putting myself back on the map. I couldn’t travel for two years because I was in prison.

“People have these different ideas about what I’m like, based on assumptions that they’ve read, and sometimes it’s the opposite of what I am. People expect the worst and are quite relieved.

“If you are basically a decent person, that will shine through. I’ve always been pretty much ‘what you see is what you get’. I don’t have a hidden agenda. I’ve never tried to be anything I’m not. I think that’s why people like me.”

And they do. The public even voted him number 46 in the BBC’s Great Britons list, sandwiched between politician Aneurin Bevin and wartime flying hero Douglas Bader.

IN the wake of the BBC film about his early years, Worried About The Boy, he’s heading for Newcastle wearing his DJ hat to star behind the decks with DJ Marc Vedo as clubbing brand Koolwaters arrives at OHSO, in the city’s Groat Market, next Friday.

Work is what keeps him going. “My career has been my salvation,” he says. “The fact that I’ve been able to go back to it has been a blessing.

I think I can finally say this time I’m going to stick to what I’m good at and stay out of trouble.”

He’s been DJ-ing for two decades, on top of his singing and recording career before and after Culture Club. “I’m lucky to have two good careers and DJ-ing has been great for me. I could work every night if I wanted to,” he says.

“I work every weekend and all over the country.

I’m off to Italy tomorrow and in the next few months to Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. The thing about dance music is it’s international.

Everywhere in the world everyone is dancing.”

Of course, being a DJ has changed as much as the music since he first turned a table in the late Seventies. It was a very different style, more primitive and with no mixers.

“I was playing things from the Seventies, then I had a band and got into the dance sound when the acid house thing happened in London.

It was more exciting than what was going on in the pop scene.

“With music, you have to be on your toes about what’s happening. Obviously it’s part of my job. I am always online. If you want to be individual, you do some research. There are lots of sites you can go on and get stuff. It’s a constant thing.

“Dance music is different to pop music. It exists within its own little world. Things you play in the club people will only probably hear there.

I don’t play things I don’t like.

“That’s the great thing about DJ-ing – you’re 100 per cent in control. Someone can give me a record in Venezuela or Newcastle and I can play it. That’s real freedom.”

SO which gives him the biggest buzz – performing or DJ-ing? “I did Glastonbury with my band a couple of weeks ago, 8,000 people, and that’s a major high,” he says.

“When you’re DJ-ing it’s getting people on the same level of emotion. It’s a perpetual high.

When you have a dance crowd in your hands and they’re loving it, there’s nothing quite like it.”

Being a DJ came quite naturally to him because it tapped into his performer side. “When I started DJ-ing, I had to learn the trade and you do that in front of people. It’s a confidence thing. The more you do, the more confident you get. You have to be into it, you have to be into the style of music and be able to DJ at four in the morning. A lot of people get on these trips and drop like flies.”

Sometimes his past catches up with him.

“Wherever I am, people come up and say my mum loves you. There’s a generation of people who only know me as a DJ,” he says.

He’s not about to let that bother him. “I enjoy what I do. As I got older, I realised how great it is to do what you love and get paid for it. This is as good as it gets.”

He has renewed ambition. “Once I got really successful I may have lost my ambition a bit but I’d probably say I’m quite ambitious now. What I know is once you’re willing to work there’s a lot of work out there – and a lot of love.

“My ambition is just to enjoy what I do and have fun with it – not make it a job, but realise it’s a great thing to be able to do.”

■ DJ Boy George is at OHSO, Newcastle, on July 30, 10pm-4am. Tickets £6 before 11pm, £7 after (£5 NUS). He also features in the 80s Rewind Festival – with Paul Young, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Rik Astley and Heaven 17 – at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on July 31. Tickets 0844-888-9991 or online at scarboroughopenairtheatre.com