I ONCE ended up in the toilets in Los Angeles where George Michael was arrested. The singer, it should be said, wasn’t there at the time. Nor were the police who arrested him. My visit came a few years after he was charged for propositioning an officer in 1998. In the interim, the toilets had become a stop on a celebrity tour. I think the street where Hugh Grant and Divine Brown were arrested in 1995 was also on the itinerary.
Michael himself turned his arrest into a joyful coming out via his Outside single and accompanying video (in which, at one point, urinals, as is only right, transform into a disco and the “police” in the video start frugging). That’s what you call a proper pop star.
It’s now been five years since the singer was found dead in his bed on Christmas Day in 2016, far too young at 53. The sadness of that loss tends to surround mentions of his name these days. Certainly, Radio 2’s celebration of his 1996 album Older, which took the form of two one-hour specials presented by Melanie C last Saturday and Sunday nights, had a rather deep seam of melancholy to it. If you can listen to the last five minutes of episode two without tearing up, you’re a better man or woman than I.
Maybe that’s as it should be given that Older is an album written in grief for Michael’s partner Anselmo Feleppa who died in 1993.
But the moments that resonated across these two documentaries were those ones where friends and contemporaries reminded us that the pop star was as egotistical and funny and human as the rest of us.
Read More: Janice Long, Terry Wogan and the intimacy of radio
In part one, Bananarama’s Sara Dallin remembered going clubbing with their mate George as well as the odd kitchen disco, during which, she admitted, “he would invariably play his own music, including unreleased stuff. He was most affronted on the rare occasion you were less than enthusiastic about a particular track.”
Holly Johnson, lead singer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, recalled the night Michael joined him onstage to sing Relax and then went out partying with the rest of the band. “Their opinion was he couldn’t hold his ale,” Johnson revealed.
Meanwhile, the producer Johnny Douglas recalled days spent in the studio with Michael. Only days, mind. “He used to work in his studio to about 6.30, 6 o’clock. He always used to leave so he could get home and watch EastEnders.”
So, there you have it. He may have been, according to Rufus Wainwright, “one of the great vocalists,” but George Michael also liked to know what was happening in the Queen Vic.
Earlier on Saturday afternoon Radio 2 offered up a listeners’ poll of the best George Michael songs. Presented by Scott Mills, it was actually rather wonderful. You can usually never trust the public to vote the right way (look at who is in Downing Street these days). But the choice of their favourite George Michael songs was surprisingly (and rightly) weighted towards his post-Wham! Days.
Careless Whisper came out top which you could probably have guessed but the top 10 was glorious. He wrote some fine songs, and yes, Rufus, the man could sing.
Yesterday morning a new Radio 4 comedy. No, wait, come back. It wasn’t terrible.
The Train at Platform 4 was written by Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt and had the bubbling presence of Rosie Cavallero to keep it on track. Set on the first day of a new train franchise it had obvious fun with management-speak, locked toilets and class. But then all British humour is about class. Or sex. Class or sex or transport. That’s all your basic humour food groups, isn’t it?
Anyway, The Train on Platform 4. Not terrible. I’d call that a result.
Listen Out For: Now You’re Asking with Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn, Radio 4. In which our favourite Irish novelist and all-round good egg turns agony aunt to answer listeners’ problems. Comedian and actor Tara Flynn pitches in advice too.
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