Fans Upset Over Boy George Appearing As Guest Judge On RuPaul’s Drag Race UK
Image: Boy George and RuPaul
Culture Club frontman and former The Voice Australia mentor, Boy George is at the centre of a heated debate surrounding his upcoming appearance as a guest judge on season four of Drag Race UK.
Trigger Warning: This story discusses assault and transphobic comments, which might be distressing to some readers. For 24 hour crisis support and suicide prevention call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For Australia-wide LGBTQI peer support call QLife on 1800 184 527 or webchat.
The singer’s appearance has upset many Drag Race fans due to his checkered past, with a conviction for beating and imprisoning a male escort in 2007 as well as for making a series of transphobic statements in 2020.
Twitter was awash with angry commentary from Drag Race viewers, with tweets ranging from “Disgusting, an actual sex-offender and a violent one at that. What, you’ve rehabilitated him now?” to “need to bully Drag Race UK into editing out Boy George.”
Other critical tweets included, “Convicted sex offender and kidnapper? Keeping the standards high?” “Oh Jesus, gross,” and “Not the transphobe who beat a sex worker he chained up.”
Another user noted that, “The BBC and it’s attitude towards sex offences is absolutely outrageous.”
Boy George’s Past Returns To Haunt Him
Category is… Celebrity guest realness! 😍 Here’s all the fabulous faces coming to #DragRaceUK 4⃣✨ pic.twitter.com/W5sWyDibRb
— RuPaul's Drag Race UK (@dragraceukbbc) August 31, 2022
For his part, Boy George, 61, said he was excited to appear on the program. “Drag Race is such a phenomenon and it has unleashed intense creativity and debate. RuPaul has made the concept of drag into a household name! I’m part of the drag daisy chain,” George said. “Every nice drag queen is my sister and the rest are second cousins! It was a lot of fun being part of the show!”
The singer, whose real name is George O’Dowd, was convicted on December 5, 2008 for the false imprisonment of a male escort whom George had handcuffed to a wall and beat with a metal chain.
While George was sentenced to 15 months, he ultimately received an early release for good behaviour in May 2009, after serving only four months. He was required to wear an ankle monitor and comply to a curfew for the remainder of his sentence.
Boy George Tied Up Male Escort And Beat Him
George was in the throes of a £400 a day heroin addiction when, in April 2007, he met Aidun Carlsen via the website Gaydar Commercial.
When Carlsen came to the singer’s flat, George tied him up, and beat him; a crime which Judge David Radford called, ”So serious that only an immediate sentence of imprisonment can be justified.”
In a 2017 interview on Piers Morgans Life Stories, Boy George said he hadn’t apologised to Carlsen. “I really don’t think it would make any difference. I always felt like not talking about it was dignified.”
“I sent myself to prison. I told the police why I did what I did. In hindsight I was having a psychotic episode. I was a drug addict so I can’t really sit here and say my reasons for doing it were founded in any way. I was insane. But I told the truth. I said, ‘This is why I did it. I was having a paranoid episode.’”
“That was terrible what I did, and I’m absolutely ashamed and sorry about what I did…What I did was wrong. I still pay the consequences for that now,” George told Morgan.
In a 2016 interview Audun had accused Boy George of “ruining his life” and opposed his The Voice gig.
“If a male celebrity beat up a woman with a chain, handcuffed her to a wall and threatened her with a sex toy, there would be a public outcry if he was given a high-profile job at the BBC. But because I am a gay man they think it’s OK. It’s outrageous,” Audun had said.
Eleven years ago today, English singer-songwriter-DJ Boy George pleads 'not guilty' to falsely imprisoning male escort Audun Carlsen by chaining him to a wall, 2008 pic.twitter.com/4pBwe6NyUX
— HillbillyWilly (@1HillbillyWilly) February 27, 2019
Transphobic Comments
Boy George has also courted controversy over a number of transphobic statements he has made in the past.
In a May 2020 interview with The Sunday Times, George said transgender and non-binary people who use pronouns reflective of their own identities, “want to be offended because they think that whatever’s going on for them is much more important than anything else.”
“The area we get into trouble is what it is permissible to say to a gay person: ‘Address me as this, address me as that,’” George said, “but I’ll call you whatever you want. I’ve spent years calling people fake names. Boy George. Siouxsie Sioux. Johnny Rotten. Of course, it’s not the same as your sexuality.”
https://twitter.com/Lycoris_Wah/status/1215055190015008769
George courted anger again in January 2020 when he tweeted, “Leave your pronoun’s at the door!” When a Twitter user was critical of his tweet, George replied, “You must refer to me as ‘Napoleon’ and that’s as ridiculous as it gets! I used the ladies toilet throughout the 80s!” George also tweeted that pronoun usage was “A modern form of attention seeking.”
In a subsequent interview with Billboard, George clarified his controversial comments saying, “There is a lot of bullying online, like ‘You have to do this, you have to do that.’”
“There is this sense that our lives are being run by the internet. My point when I said the thing about the pronouns was, you will never have a situation, when you encounter me, where you’ll have to explain yourself to the degree where it’s uncomfortable for you,” George said.
Drag Race UK Guest Judges Announced
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Other guests announced by the BBC for the upcoming season of Drag Race UK include Dame Joanna Lumley, Mel B, FKA Twigs, Olly Alexander, Alison Hammond, Cathy Dennis, and Lorraine Pascale.
Lumley said, “It thrills me to be a part of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. The show is astounding at every level, and I loved it from the very start. RuPaul is the definition of what it is to be fabulous, and the show is packed with mad creativity, humour, and drop-dead glamour,” Lumley said.
Strictly Come Dancing’s Tess Daly, who is a guest for the ever-popular Snatch Game episode said, “What is there not to love about Drag Race UK? The hair, the make-up, the glamour, the costumes, the lip synching, Ru, Michelle – I love you forever. I love it all.”
While an announcement for the premiere date for Drag Race UK season four has yet to be made by the BBC, a short teaser trailer was uploaded on the show’s official Twitter page on Tuesday featuring the new tagline: “BRING IT TO THE RUNW4Y.”
The cast of Queens competing is also under wraps, though rumoured Queens include Black Peppa, Chedder Gorgeous, Danny Beard, and Pixie Polite amongst others. RuPaul will once again be joined for the new season by Michelle Visage, Alan Carr, and Graham Norton.
