Mad about the Boy

WE CAN hardly call him Boy anymore, now that George is about to celebrate his 50th birthday on Tuesday next.

Yet it’s hard to believe that it really is almost three decades since he first skipped onto the Top of the Pops stage in 1982, singing Do You Really Want To Hurt Me in that gorgeously rich soulful voice, and making a million households sit up and ask simultaneously: “Is that a man or a woman?”

In a single moment, the term ‘gender-bender’ was born. Gender-bending had been waiting in the wings for years, via Bolan, Bowie and glam rock, but never to the extent that a pop star actually had to prefix their name with their gender so that pop fans would know who was what, as it were.