“I started going to Madame Louise's, the lesbian club where all the pun...” — Boy George Quote

I started going to Madame Louise's, the lesbian club where all the punk bands used to go - the Sex Pistols, the Clash. I remember seeing Billy Idol walk in there; he was gorgeous.

When I was in prison, a lot of my friends blew me away. But Stephen Fry wrote to me. It was very humbling.

Before I got famous, I was like a rake. When I was a teenager, I lived on nervous energy. And I always forgot to eat. It was not something I was obsessed with. And then suddenly I got famous, people started taking me out to fancy joints. And the pounds pile on. So I'm much more conscious now about when I eat. How I eat. What I eat.

For someone like me, who has grown up with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, it's hard not to invest a lot of myself in what I do.

You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything in your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.

At some point the label 'hard-rocker' began to get on my nerves, and I decided to break those chains. My music definitely doesn't sound like AC/DC or the Scorpions - nothing against either of these bands, they're okay. But I was fed up with that image.

My mother told me when I was a toddler and in the crib that they would have music playing, and the thing when I lit up was boogie-woogie or something out of the Louie Jordan period of sometimes big bands, and then all kinds of things.

Barry White, Smokey Robinson and Curtis Mayfield are big influences for me. But I'm also a metal head. I was in a bunch of punk rock bands. The Bee Gees, hip-hop and the Beach Boys are just as much of an influence on me as Smokey.