Karma Chamaleon

NEW YORK —
Boy George, the androgynous 1980’s icon, suffered public humiliation today when he was forced to sweep the streets of New York in front of a throng of photographers and television cameras.

The once-glamorous popstar became almost unrecognisable as he donned an orange “New York City Department of Sanitation” vest over his black sweatshirt and three-quarter-length jeans to clean a road by the Brooklyn Bridge to satisfy a community service order.

But the former Culture Club frontman remained defiant, declaring: “Nothing is going to rehabilitate me."

"My mum was a cleaner. My dad was a builder. I do not give a f***, you know. All I am doing is my community service. Let me do it,” he screamed as he flicked dust and cigarette ends at reporters with his government-issued brush.

“It’s supposed to be making me humble. Why don’t you let me do it?” he said.

The 45-year-old singer, born George O’Dowd, fell foul of the law in a bizarre incident in October when he called police with a bogus report of a burglary at his Little Italy apartment and ended up getting arrested for possession of a small amount of cocaine.

The drugs charge was dropped in March when he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of filing a false police report.

The judge reacted angrily, however, when O'Dowd failed to turn up in court in June and threatened him with jail if he did not pay his $1,000 fine and complete his community service by the end of this month.

The singer argued that he could be “more useful” staging a charity concert than spending his time “prancing around in a park”.

But Judge Antony Ferrara ridiculed his suggestion that he could satisfy the requirement by making a public service announcement, holding a fashion workshop, or putting on a DJ show to raise money for Aids.

O’Dowd turned up for duty at a Sanitation Department garage on the Lower East Side two minutes before the 7am deadline with a Channel 4 documentary film crew in his car.
Met by dozens of photographers and cameramen, he waved and shouted: “Impressive turn-out.”

After receiving his marching orders, he was issued with his orange vest, a brush, a shovel and a rolling bucket with green plastic bags, which he loaded into a van.

A convoy of TV crews gave chase as he was driven through Chinatown before being dumped on the filthy street by the Brooklyn Bridge.

The scene quickly became a scrum, with O’Dowd rounding on a reporter for an American TV show: “You’re really pathetic. You’re the one following me sweeping the streets. Who needs to get a life better than you?”

Sanitation workers ordered the singer back into the van and took him back to the garage.
“Things outside in the street were a little chaotic,” Keith Mellis, a Sanitation spokesman, said. “We’ll see if there’s some cleaning that can be done inside.”

Jeremy Pearce, O’Dowd’s co-manager, complained that the street-sweeping seemed to have been staged for the media. “He does not need to by humiliated. He is a humble person,” he said. “He sweeps his apartment, but he has not swept the streets before.”