Boy George to clean up his act — and the park

BOY George hit out at his community service punishment of sweeping leaves in a New York park last night, saying a charity concert would have been more worthwhile.

The former Culture Club frontman, whose real name is George O’Dowd, had wanted to put on a show to raise money for an Aids organisation as part of his sentence for wasting police time.

But an angry judge at Manhattan Criminal Court ruled earlier this month that he should do the same sort of task as everybody else.

And yesterday he warned O’Dowd that if he did not complete his five days’ raking duty by the end of August, he would be jailed.

“I’m not going to give you another chance,” Judge Anthony Ferrara said sternly.

After the hearing the singer said he was relieved and untroubled by the menial nature of his punishment, but still believed it was not the best choice.

“It would have been more useful to make 30 grand with a concert, rather than be prancing around in a park,” O’Dowd said.

O’Dowd said of the leaf raking, which he will do in August at an unspecified park in the city: “I don’t care about doing cleaning up. My mum was a cleaner.

“I’ve always been a scrubber.”

He vowed to dress up in “something loud” having been relieved to find out an orange boiler suit would not be required attire.

O’Dowd described his arrest in October after he himself called police to his Little Italy apartment as “just a very unfortunate trauma”.

“I regret the whole thing,” he said.

The judge blasted the singer for not turning up in court when he had neither paid a $1,000 fine nor signed up for community service.

They were both parts of a sentence the DJ was given in March under a plea bargain which saw him admit wasting police time by claiming his apartment in New York had been burgled last year.

At the same time a cocaine possession charge against him was dropped, sparing him the possibility of a prison sentence.