THE SADNESS OF KING GEORGE

The pop superstar had the looks, voice and talent but behind his global success he was deeply troubled

GEORGE MICHAEL could not have wished for a better reception to his first solo album Faith when it was released in October 1987. Within weeks it was topping the album charts in both the UK and the US and tracks such as I Want Your Sex, Father Figure and Monkey were racing up hit parades around the globe.

There were three top 10 singles here, for example, and no fewer than four number ones across the Atlantic. The album went on to sell 25 million copies worldwide, generating nearly £40million and establishing George as the undisputed British pop king of the 80s.

But even as he had the world at his feet he hinted at problems to come. In an interview to promote his follow-up album, he told one journalist: “I’m not stupid enough to think I can deal with another 10 or 15 years of major exposure. I think that’s the ultimate tragedy of fame: people who are simply out of control, who are lost. I’ve seen so many of them and I don’t want to be another cliché.”

The sad truth is, however, that George – who died on Christmas Day at the tragically young age of 53 – became the very embodiment of the cliché “live fast, die young”.

From alcohol and marijuana in the early days he graduated to ecstasy, cocaine and crack as the stress of coping with life as an icon, wrestling with his sexuality and the depression prompted by the deaths of two of the people closest to him drove the troubled star to seek oblivion in ever more potent ways. It was a downward spiral that was played out in full view of his fans over more than three decades.

As a heart-throb with Wham!, the duo George formed with his schoolfriend Andrew Ridgeley in 1981, there was no indication of future struggles with his sexuality. As one observer put it: “With big hair, a fake tan, huge earrings and skintight shorts, he exuded a sexuality that brought him a huge following among teenage girls.”

But offstage George, who had always considered himself bisexual, was coming to the conclusion that he was gay. In an era when popular attitudes to homosexuality were less liberal than they are today this was not a conclusion he was willing to share with the public. As a result, his first serious love affair, with a Brazilian dress designer called Anselmo Feleppa, was conducted away from the limelight.

“I had my very first relationship at 27 because I really had not actually come to terms with my sexuality until I was 24,” he said later. But it was not to last. Anselmo was HIV-positive and died in 1993, just two years after their relationship had begun.

George was hit with another hammer blow in 1996 when he was told that his mother had cancer and within months she was dead. Her passing affected him so deeply he contemplated suicide. “I struggled with huge depression after my mother died,” he said. “Losing your mother and your lover in the space of three years is a tough one.”

BY NOW George was in another clandestine relationship, this time with Texan businessman Kenny Goss, but an episode occurred in April 1998 that was to make any further attempt at concealment futile.

George was arrested in a Beverly Hills public lavatory by an undercover police officer and charged with engaging in a lewd act. The scandal finally persuaded him to go public about his sexuality and his relationship with Goss. Indeed when George’s next album came out a few months later it included a track called Outside devoted to the incident.

The video that accompanied the single release depicted policemen kissing and led Marcelo Rodriguez, the undercover officer who had arrested him, to launch an ultimately unsuccessful bid for compensation for distress. While the song reached number 2 in the UK, it failed to chart in the US.

A further sign that George might have no future in America following his Beverly Hills arrest came after he released Shoot The Dog, a song that ridiculed George W Bush, in 2002. He was criticised by one New York newspaper and later told an interviewer that he felt unable to return to the US while the furore continued.

By now George’s lifestyle was beginning to get more excessive. What began as an over-indulgence in fine wines and champagne turned into a reliance on the relaxing effects of cannabis. He once admitted to smoking 25 cannabis cigarettes a day but claimed to have cut down to seven or eight.

Not surprisingly his behaviour began to get more erratic. In February 2006 he was arrested and charged with possession of drugs and in July of that year a newspaper printed allegations that he had engaged in sexual activity on London’s Hampstead Heath. George later admitted that he often went out seeking what he called “anonymous, no-strings sex”.

In August 2010 he was arrested after crashing his Range Rover into a Snappy Snaps store near his home in Highgate, north London. He served four weeks in jail after admitting driving under the influence of drugs.

A year later – having split from Goss – George’s Symphonica tour of Europe was cut short when he fell ill with severe pneumonia and was admitted to hospital in Vienna, Austria, in November. He spent a week in intensive care and was not discharged from hospital until December 21.

PERHAPS the most bizarre incident of all occurred in May 2013 when he was being driven down the M1 in a Range Rover. He apparently opened the passenger door with a view to slamming it shut again because it hadn’t been closed properly but ended up falling on to the carriageway. He escaped being hit by following traffic and was airlifted to hospital where he was treated for cuts and bruises.

Jackie Georgiou, wife of George’s cousin Andros, one of a number of family members who persuaded him to go into rehab in the summer of 2014, said last year: “I think he was off his nut and threw himself out of the car. Over the years he has fallen asleep at the wheel twice, gone to jail, almost died of pneumonia and thrown himself out of a car. People had to intervene before he died.”

According to Georgiou, George – who had a fortune estimated at more than £100million – was still being treated by the £190,000-a-month Kusnacht Practice in Switzerland a year later. “He was smoking crack. Before he went away he got to the point where he would be shaking, saying, ‘I need it.’”

She added: “It’s crack, it’s marijuana, it’s drink, it’s coke. It was pretty dark and things were getting darker. He was going to end up locked up or dead.”

Sadly, on Christmas Day her worst fears were realised.