October 2008

V.

Vets in Herriott County

By In Features0 Comments

The hours are hellish, the travel gruelling, the emotional toll immeasurable: is it any wonder nobody wants to be a traditional country vet any more… Nigel Farndale visits ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ country and finds James Herriot is long gone

Roll the words ‘country vet’ over your tongue. Only three syllables and three vowels, but all the resonance of a tuning fork. Twenty years ago, these words would have evoked James Herriot, the Dales vet turned best-selling author. All Creatures Great and Small, the long-running television series based on his semi-autobiographical novels, was as familiar and comforting as a log fire or a pot of tea.

Farmers wore flat caps and spoke in broad accents, they were amusingly contrary and dour, and they always seemed one step ahead of the earnest, gentlemanly vets.

But even when it first appeared in the late 1970s, All Creatures Great and Small was nostalgic; set in a folksy 1940s England that was rapidly disappearing. Intensive farming was on the way; thundering tractors had long since replaced draught horses and veterinary medicine was becoming more sophisticated. As Herriot himself put it: ‘Years ago, farmers were uneducated and eccentric and said funny things, and we ourselves were comparatively uneducated. We had no antibiotics, few drugs. A lot of time was spent pouring things down cows’ throats. The whole thing added up to a lot of laughs. There’s more science now, but not so many laughs.’

Nowadays, the words ‘country vet’ evoke…… what… Images of mass culls, probably. The stench of pyres. All those diseases that chill at their mere mention: avian flu, BSE, bovine TB, bluetongue, and most notoriously, foot and mouth.

For a time, the vet seemed to be a harbinger of doom or, worse, an agent of an unfeeling government. Just as priests in the Middle Ages were blamed for the spread of the Black Death – superstitious villagers jeered at them – so vets found themselves held in suspicion by some farmers. It is no coincidence that the first vets were referred to as ‘the priests of nature’.

Does the real country vet lie somewhere between these two stereotypes… To find out, I spent a day with one in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, in part because this was where much of All Creatures Great and Small was filmed, but also because this was where I grew up, on a farm.

A visit from the vet was always worth a stare. To a child, he seemed an exotic creature, always smelling of disinfectant, always using long Latin words when making a diagnosis. One of ours would manage to smoke a pipe as he felt around inside a cow, another always wore a bowtie and had mutton-chop whiskers. He would ask me to fetch him a bucket of hot water, a task that made me feel important. His name was Jack Watkinson and he has since retired. His son, John, aged 48, runs the practice, Hollin Rigg, on the outskirts of Leyburn.

The view from his surgery is one of the most captivating in England: hay meadows framed by dry-stone walls and thick hedgerows that lead the eye up the Ure valley towards the sleeping giant that is Penhill. It is the reason that the television series was filmed here rather than in the more prosaic landscape around Thirsk, which was where Alf …Wight had his practice. That was Herriot’s real name, by the way. He was obliged to take a pen name because British law forbade veterinary surgeons from advertising. The profession has always been blighted by red tape.

The foot and mouth epidemic of 2001 came to within a mile of this idyllic place. It was a stressful time to be a vet. The contiguous cull was a panic measure introduced when state vets realised that the disease was spreading out of control. Farmers who resisted were subjected to dawn raids by government officials accompanied by police in riot gear. Up to 10 million animals were slaughtered – a million of them unnecessarily as they were subsequently shown not to have the disease – and the countryside was turned into a horror show. Plumes of black smoke. The smell of death. An animal holocaust that left witnesses traumatised. Neighbour feared neighbour. Visitors were turned away. The general election was postponed for a month. Researchers at Lancaster University have shown that vets suffered almost as much as farmers, with reports of distress, flashbacks and nightmares – the suicide rate among them increased to four times the national average, and the method was always the same: the same lethal injection that they used to put animals down.

Watkinson is not the depressive type, but he did find the foot and mouth crisis frustrating. ‘It was chaos,’ he says. ‘We felt we were banging our heads against a wall with Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs]. The licensing and the movement restrictions kept us busy, and I was constantly sending Defra letters on behalf of clients pleading to move their stock from fields with no grass.

‘We would promise to lay down plastic sheeting on the road and burn the plastic afterwards, but there was complete intransigence. From the welfare point of view, it was nuts. The lunatics were running the asylum. All local vets were marginalised. Defra officials would come and say it was their show.’

In two specific ways, Watkinson is a traditional country vet. The first is that he has a Y chromosome. In the past decade, 80 per cent of graduates from veterinary college have been women, drawn to the profession by its caring image as well as television docu-soaps and dramas such as Animal Hospital and Vets’ School. This feminisation of the profession has meant a rapid decline in the number of vets willing to do farm work: only one in 10, compared to 50 per cent 20 years ago. That’s the other way in which Watkinson is a traditionalist. He specialises in farm animals and, as such, belongs to a dying breed. The government was warned of an ‘impending shortage’ of large farm animal vets by a parliamentary committee five years ago, and though it pledged an ‘urgent action plan’, no action has been taken, urgent or otherwise. It is predicted that one in five remaining farm vets will quit within 10 years.

Women vets tend to prefer ‘small-animal’ work in cities, dealing with pets mostly, cats and dogs. And why wouldn’t they… Farm work has notoriously unsocial hours, with emergency night calls a regular occurrence. Small-animal work involves hardly any travel, and the increase in pet insurance means that it pays better, covering as it does more expensive operations and longer treatments.

Watkinson is a Yorkshireman born and bred – friendly and wry, but blunt. When his teenage children – he has three, two boys and a girl – opened an email account for him they called him johnmadvet@… The farmers nickname him ‘Rhino Vet’. ‘Because I’m thick-skinned and I know how to charge.’ And when his assistant sees me arrive with a photographer, he says, ‘I see they’ve sent two of you in case John turns violent.’ The old Herriot humour is still here, then.

Which reminds me of the other reason Watkinson is a good starting point. His father, Jack, he of the mutton chops and bow tie, was the chief veterinary adviser for All Creatures Great and Small – mention this, though, and John Watkinson groans. ‘In veterinary circles, Herriot is long gone,’ he says. ‘Ancient history. And I don’t think as a stereotype it was especially helpful.’

Meaning… ‘Since Herriot, there has been an assumption that veterinary work is romantic and you are not supposed to be business-oriented, but why should vets be different… We have a living to make. This business of ……”We love animals and will work for nothing” is just soft. Get real.’

It is 8.30am, the official start of his long working day, though Watkinson has been on call all night. ‘It is very hard to find an assistant these days because no one wants to do the unsocial hours,’ he says. ‘I advertised for 13 months, a one-in-two-evenings-and-weekend rota, without any takers. Only after we formed a partnership with a neighbouring practice and were able to offer a one-in-four rota did we get a response. A lot of adverts these days specify “no on-call”. But that isn’t what we’re about. Yes it costs you 150 quid to take your dog to the vet at midnight, but it bloody well ought to. That’s the free market. It’s your choice.’

His round begins with his weekly visit to Washfold Farm, a state-of-the-art, computerised dairy unit, where the Metcalfe brothers milk 550 pedigree Holstein cows. ‘The veterinary profession follows farming,’ Watkinson says, ‘and the dairy industry has had a 10 per cent attrition rate every year since the 1960s. So there are fewer farms. Metcalfe’s have gone from 100 cows to 550 in the past 20 years, so from our point of view that allows for those dairy farmers in this area who have retired, like your father.’

He always rings five minutes before he arrives on a farm, to make sure that they are ready for him – because, from the moment he gets out of his vehicle, he charges £60 an hour. They are ready: a row of 50 cows, their heads tethered, their computerised records printed out. In the Herriot films, the vet would strip to his waist, but not any more. This vet has his rubber leggings over his wellies already; now he also puts on his baseball cap, rubber apron and a rubber stopper device over his upper arm (his own invention, made from, I think, an old tyre). It is messy working at the business end of a cow. On comes the arm-length surgical glove. In goes the arm. The cow’s eyes bulge.

Today he is doing fertility checks. He flicks their stomachs with his finger, listening for fluid in the uterus. He presses his stethoscope to their wombs. He studies an ultrasound machine, which is pulled on a trolley beside him as he moves down the line. ‘We all use scanners now,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘Though I was trained to palpate the uterus, teaching your hand how to feel. It’s a dying skill that takes a year to learn properly.’

As he works, he issues instructions to Tom, the herdsman who, strangely enough, has an intolerance to milk – to drinking it, that is. ‘Give this girl one percentile,’ Watkinson says.

‘This girl is having twins.’

‘This girl’s geld [barren]. She might make £600 as beef [as opposed to £2,000 at her milking peak].’

The cows are tagged with electronic censors, so that their steps can be measured every day and their fitness monitored. ‘If a cow gives 10 per cent less milk a computer beeps,’ he says. ‘Better feed, better genetics, this is farming as science. The problem is, fertility suffers. With this one, I’m putting in a progesterone implant.’ He does a double shunt to get his arm farther in. Those widening bovine eyes again.

‘I would say the welfare standards of an intensive unit like this are 10 times better than traditional muck and straw. Mind your back, Tom.’ …The cow coughs and the herdsman is splattered.

The stethoscope comes on for a girl with suspected pneumonia. ‘She’s blowing a bit. I’m always listening to them for coughing and bealing [anxious mooing]. Always looking at the condition of their coats and the consistency of the faeces. Always checking their cudding. They get good value for money from their vet because I see 50 in one morning, rather than on a small farm where I might see one. It’s cost effective for them and regular business for me.’

He sets off again in his red 4×4 – number plate J7 VET, loaded with medicines, smelling of disinfectant – and drives quickly along winding country lanes until he reaches the Wilsons’ farm, about 20 minutes away. He has come to look at some scoured Hereford calves. These are kept outside on verdant, bosomy pastureland and will be bought by Waitrose when they are ready, which means that they are ‘farm-assured’. ‘This one’s badly,’ Watkinson says, taking a blood sample. ‘This water bubbling out of his mouth could be cocci [coccidiosis]. But I think it’s just the transition to barley that’s causing the scour. Try putting more fibre in his diet.’

The clock is still running so there is little time for banter. Watkinson is friendly with the farmers, but conscious of their being nervous about him hanging around at the end of a visit. ‘They joke with me that they like to get me off the farm as soon as possible. You’re always doing a bit of this social chatting and having a whinge together, though. It does both of us a lot of good. People like to belly ache. I don’t charge for 10 minutes’ chatting time. I’d soon hear about it if I did. I always record the times on my tape-recorder. If you are not straight, you are soon out of work because you have to face people next day. Everyone knows everyone else. You are scared of your own reputation.’

Do vets have to harden their hearts… ‘Farmers are more sentimental than you would imagine. You have to be tactful and polite. I put my own dog down five years ago and couldn’t believe how upset I was. I must have done hundreds. I suppose livestock are different: putting them down is an economic decision. Since I put my own dog down, I have been more sympathetic. I have seen plenty of hard-bitten farmers start sobbing when I’ve put their favourite sheepdog down. The sheepdogs are their companions and work mates – in the tractor, in the fields.’

Canvas the views of vets around the country and you soon discover that it’s not just the job that has changed, the diseases seem to be constantly adapting and evolving, too. Bluetongue, caused by a virus spread by midges, is a relatively new import, for example, one that will not be eradicated in the foreseeable future. There is also the excitable media to contend with. Claire Knott is a vet in Norfolk who was involved in massive culls of poultry during the outbreak of avian flu there in 2006. ‘One of the biggest additional stresses of the job these days is dealing with the hysteria caused by the media,’ she tells me. ‘There were some farms we could barely get down because the lanes were blocked by TV crews. They were being impossible in my opinion, feeding the frenzy. We had to spend 48 hours just manning the phones, trying to reassure members of the public that their pet chickens were safe.

‘We had one nursery school that wanted to close down because it was near a poultry farm. We had to reassure them it was safe, which it was. There had been outbreaks of avian flu as far back as 1990, but the media paid no attention to them. Only when it was reported that it might possibly carry to humans was there media interest. Reporting a notifiable disease is a nightmare because you are telling a farmer he may be about to lose his livelihood – and that is very distressing for him.’

Meanwhile, back in Wensleydale, Watkinson explains that he is always on the look-out for symptoms of foot and mouth. ‘You have to know what orf is to know it’s not foot and mouth,’ he says. ‘It is passed down the vets’ folk memory how to spot that.’

One of his bugbears is that because so few young vets want to do farming practice these days, the old skills are being forgotten. And the next time there is an outbreak of foot and mouth, or swine fever, or anthrax, it could prove fatal. Another beef of his, if the pun will be excused, is the legal obligation that vets have to give first-aid emergency treatment free.

‘No other countries have this,’ he says. ‘We do charitable work out of our own pockets all the time. We had someone bring in an injured seagull the other day. And we often get tourists bringing in rabbits they’ve run over. Or rabbits with myxie [myxomatosis]. We have a sick-rabbit box at the surgery entrance for Sundays, with a message saying, “When we get back, we’ll put it down.” Some tourists won’t agree to that, so they will knock on every vet’s door all the way home until it is treated.’

Over lunch – sandwiches provided by his wife, Nicky, back at the surgery – we talk about the unsocial hours. ‘A lot of the difficult vetting occurs out of hours in the farming world. It is a major issue as to who is going to do it in the future. There’s a lot of political chat at the moment about the working time directive. Personally, I think we will have to go onto a subscription service for out-of-hours, like the AA. You may not get home calls from GPs any more – they totally abdicate their responsibility after 6pm – yet we all [as taxpayers] pay a subscription for them. They are only half-doctors. Part-timers. They should be ashamed of themselves. Vets get no taxpayers’ money. We are 100 per cent private.’

Another beef is about what he calls ‘lady vets’. He describes himself as ‘quite cynical’ on the subject. ‘It’s rough, physical work being a farm vet. And a lot of women are dropping out because they can’t cope with the hours. What’s it called these days… The work-life balance…’ Claire Knott, incidentally, has three children, but didn’t take a career break, just 12 weeks off for each. Though, tellingly, her eldest daughter is training to be a vet at Bristol.

Nicky Paull, the new president of the British Veterinary Association, also has an interesting perspective on this. She has a large practice in Cornwall, where the controversial issue at the moment is badger-culling to stop the spread of bovine TB. It has divided the countryside, with farmers and vets pitted against animal-lovers (she is all for culling, but Defra has ruled it out for the moment). Hers is, in other words, a physically demanding farming practice.

‘I encountered sexism when I started here in 1979,’ she says. ‘When I appeared on farms, I would be met with a look of horror. It was like they were seeing a female vicar for the first time. It’s worst with cows because I’m quite slight and short as well – 5ft 2in – so I need to stand on something. I sometimes wish I could get my arm in farther, but you develop techniques to compensate for the lack of brute force.’

She reckons there is no farm work that she cannot do as well as a man, however, and some pastoral work she might do better. ‘Being a vet can sometimes be like being a counsellor,’ she says. ‘During foot and mouth, farmers were very isolated – not being allowed visitors on the farm – so when the vet visited they wanted to talk. I remember there was one farmer who I was quite worried about. He was so depressed. I just sat in his kitchen and we talked and talked until his mood lifted and I felt it was safe to leave him on his own.’

The original set of the interior of the surgery used in All Creatures Great and Small is now located at the Richmondshire Museum, in Richmond, about a 12-mile drive from Watkinson’s practice. He considers this a short run compared to some of his journeys, a 40-minute drive not being unusual. ‘And they are slow miles,’ he says. ‘Not fast miles on a motorway.’ …The rising fuel costs are a problem for him, not least because he does not begin his clock until he gets onto the farm.

He has come to inspect a small flock of Wensleydale sheep. Many farmers don’t consider it viable to call out a vet for a sheep, because the visit costs more than the sheep is worth. The owner of these sheep, though, believes it is her ethical duty to pay for treatment – she even believes in ethical castration with painkillers, which is not something more traditional farmers go in for. Foot rot is the problem today.

As he works in a pen in the corner of the field, Watkinson gives me an anatomy lesson, showing me an ulcer in the joint of the foot. ‘Farmers call it scald. You can’t pare that away. It’s jiggered. I’m going to have to amputate it.’ As he is holding the ewe on her back, he asks me to fetch him a bucket of water. He freezes the claw, then uses cheese wire attached to two metal rods to saw it off, another improvised device. It was given to him by his father when he qualified. Folk memory again.

‘Actually, these cutters go back to Bingham’s day,’ he says. Bingham was a local legend, the vet in this area before Jack Watkinson. He had fought in the First World War, been a Mountie and used to work with Alf …Wight; indeed he features in the Herriot books and was such a hard drinker that customers would come to the pub rather than the surgery to find him. My father recalls seeing a swaying Bingham having to steady himself against the car when he turned up at the farm one day on a call.

‘He was quite a character,’ …Watkinson says. ‘There was another vet round here, MacDonald, who would never itemise a bill, just write, “For services rendered.” Everyone would pay up because they trusted him.’

On the subject of folk memory, I remind Watkinson of the time he came to visit a sick cow on our farm, one that he suspected had eaten some electric fence wire and got it tangled in its gut. He opened up the cow but couldn’t find the wire and, days later, the cow made a full recovery. He said at the time he must have let the evil spirits out.

‘What I meant was that I’d made the wrong diagnosis,’ he says now, with a grin. ‘Luckily for us, nature has a way of curing itself sometimes.’

B.

Boy George

By In Interview0 Comments

The middle-aged man who answers the glass door could be anyone, though the fact that Boy George has owned this house on a hill in Hampstead for the past 16 years does narrow the possibilities. And it definitely is his house because on the gate posts, as you wait to be buzzed in, you see fans have scrawled messages to him in felt-tip – some are fresh, some faded.

Japanese tourists especially used to track him down here. He thinks they bribed taxi drivers to show them where he lived, then they would wait with their cameras. ‘I’m thinking of putting up a plaque,’ he says. ‘Boy George lives here. Go away.’

He also has a house in Ibiza, and had an apartment in New York, until his unpleasant experience there a couple of years ago, which we shall come to. He moved back to London after that, but not before he had this house ‘exorcised and blessed’. The place has gothic turrets, around which you half expect bats to be circling. Come to think of it, what with his shaved head, there is something of the Uncle Fester about the man himself. There is a blue Star of David tattooed on it, with a pink lotus blossom on the base of his skull. He has luminous pale eyes, wears no make-up and is dressed in a black hoodie and sweatpants – a Buddha in a tracksuit.

Even as a svelte youth playing on his androgynous looks, he had the suggestion of a double chin, one which he used to disguise with shadowy make-up. Now, at 47, he seems comfortable with himself, but different… different from the man who was once one of the most recognisable people in the Western world, after Diana, Princess of Wales and the Pope. So different that it is possible not to recognise him at all, as Italian police discovered a couple of days before my visit.

‘I lost my passport when I was in Italy and because I didn’t have a driving licence I had to show my credit cards, and when they still wouldn’t accept who I was, I had to do the Boy George thing, which I rarely do. I had to say, “I’m Boy George”, then they let me go. They clocked I had nail varnish on and that caused great hilarity.

‘You’d think people would get over it, but they never do. Look,’ he holds out nails that are chipped and varnished black. ‘It isn’t even proper nail varnish. It’s scuppered and butch. It’s manly nail varnish. In a way, it is reassuring, like police sirens.’

The varnish helped convince the Italian police that he was Boy George? ‘I suppose so. Anyway, they let me go, which was a relief. Thought it was going to be pasta for a week.’

He still does nice lines like that. Indeed, they trip off his tongue relentlessly. He talks quickly and breathily – wheezily, actually, because he suffers from asthma. On the subject of which, he couldn’t have eaten pasta for a week, because he is on a special no-wheat diet. No sugar, either. The asthma doesn’t stop him smoking, though. ‘When you smoke as a singer you lose a few octaves, but you gain something as well. Pure jazz, my voice.’

In a curious way, his voice is more recognisable than he is these days. The cadence is still vaguely East End, still archly camp, or camply arch, and it is still punctuated with laughter – albeit the laughter of habit rather than mirth. He always laughed like that when interviewed on television, but I never realised until now that it was a nervy, defensive laugh. Perhaps it has become so over time.

Boy George was just 19 when he found fame as the singer of Culture Club. The reggae-influenced New Romantic band released their first record in 1982 and went on to sell more than 50 million, notching up seven British and nine American Top 10 hits, and going to No 1 in both countries with Karma Chameleon. Boy George played upon his androgyny not only in the way he dressed – the beaded hair, the geisha make-up, the big hats – but also in what he said. When talk-show host Russell Harty asked if he was keen on sex, he said he’d sooner have a cup of tea.

Actually, he was very much gay, as well Harty knew, and when he did officially come out in America, two years later, he had to wear a bulletproof vest because of the death threats – with admirable insouciance, he worried that it made him ‘look chunky’. Examples of his self-indulgence were legion, but perhaps the most rock-star-ish was his insistence on flying the opposite way around the world to the rest of his band for a show in Japan – because it was better ‘nine ki’ energy.

Despite this better energy, the band split up in 1986 and Boy George checked into rehab for his heroin addiction. Some solo success followed, both as a singer-songwriter and as a club DJ. But his biggest come-back was his autobiographical musical, Taboo, which did well in the West End, and not so well on Broadway. He also launched his own designer clothing label (B-Rude) and wrote a memoir, Take it Like a Man.

He has just started a new tour, his first in 10 years, but it may be cut short depending on what happens next month. George O’Dowd, to use his real name, is due to stand trial in November after being accused of falsely imprisoning a 28-year-old Norwegian male escort and chaining him to a radiator in his former flat in London. O’Dowd pleaded not guilty to the charge in February and was released on bail. He faces a possible 15 years in jail. ‘I would love to be able to talk about the trial but I can’t,’ he says now. ‘I’ll talk to you about it afterwards because there is a lot I would like to say.’

Is he apprehensive? ‘No. I’ll think about it when it happens. You wouldn’t want to think of me spending all these weeks panicking in anticipation. It would be so bad for me.’

He says his spirits are kept high by the fans who come to his concerts, as well as by the people he bumps into in the street. Some may consider his behaviour seedy, but there seems to be a deep-seated affection for him as well. ‘People are funny in England. They will cheerfully shout out, “Hey, George, I hear you got nicked again, you’re a one!” Sometimes it can be annoying, but usually it makes me laugh. In America, no one says anything. They are too embarrassed to bring it up.’

This latest charge follows his arrest and trial in New York. In 2005, O’Dowd falsely reported a break-in at his Manhattan flat – and police officers who responded found 13 grams of cocaine there, allegedly, but their over-eagerness to search without a warrant ruled out the possibility of drugs charges. He was found guilty of wasting police time and a judge made him sweep the New York streets on a five-day community-service order. O’Dowd called it ‘media service’ because of the paparazzi frenzy that followed. With his state-issue orange vest, he wore Capri pants and shoes without socks. It was meant to be a humiliation, but O’Dowd reckoned his working-class background meant it wasn’t. ‘My mum was a cleaner, my dad was a builder,’ he shouted across to the scrum of reporters, as he got to work with his brush. ‘Know what I mean?’

Does he take drugs now? ‘Never, ever, ever do drugs again and I don’t drink either. My job of giving the police something to do is over.’

How long since he took them? ‘It’s been a long time. Telling you exact days and months is only helpful to me, not you. I can say that now and mean it, because I’m in a good place. But there was a time when I could have said it knowing I didn’t mean it.’

A curious distinction. Drugs brought him pleasure to begin with, presumably, but if he had his time again would he take that first line, that first needle? ‘If I had known what a dreary old road it would be? Never. And if I can stop anyone else starting on that road, I will. Time is precious and drugs waste time. I think Amy Winehouse is going to realise that soon. Hers is the most played-out drug addiction in rock’n’roll history. Like a living soap opera. But pain makes a wonderful sound. Her terrible vulnerability is touching. So raw and effortless, not even pushing the notes. From a singer’s point of view that’s scary. You notice she is hitting these rich notes without trying, tossing them away like a handbag.’ Pause. ‘And I love her hair-do.’

He’s sort of talking about himself, of course. And on the subject of soap operas, why did he agree to be filmed for The Madness of Boy George, an unflattering Channel 4 documentary a couple of years ago? ‘They pursued me until I surrendered. It was dreadful. A piece of trash. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever, ever done.’ He laughs at his own exaggeration. ‘No, it’s not. Of course there have been much worse things I have done, and will no doubt do, but as a piece of television it was lazy; trying to turn me into a headline.’

They didn’t have to try too hard. ‘You mean because I was doing the community service when they were making it? Yes, but why did they have to go on about that?’

Well, it was a bizarre episode, even by his own standards. ‘As much as other people might like to cling on to it, it’s over. Done. It means nothing to me, Oh Vienna.’

So he didn’t learn anything about himself from that experience? ‘I learnt that I don’t like getting up at 6.30 in the morning and that Chinese people chop vegetables really small, which makes them hard to pick up off the pavement.’

Does that make him shallow? ‘Oh God, you’re really trying hard, aren’t you? No, there is nothing remotely shallow about me: I could probably talk for hours about my community service, but it means nothing. Nothing. It was only five days. I don’t know whether that makes me shallow, or enlightened and Buddha-like.’

Well, he’s Buddha like in one respect. He even seems to have a shrine to himself in the house: two shelves of curiosities including two wooden name plates: one that reads George O’Dowd, the other, Boy George. We are sitting in his high-ceilinged kitchen, which has stairs leading up to a balcony.

On one wall there is a giant mirror, on another a stencil painting saying, ‘F— you. Hate you.’ There is also a photograph of David Bowie, a crucifix, an assortment of candles and a gothic-looking throne-like chair, whose arm rests are fashioned in the shape of two large phalluses. ‘They were made for me,’ he says when I do a double-take. On another shelf are books about Andy Warhol, Marc Bolan and Oscar Wilde.

It may sound unlikely, but there is something Wildeian about Boy George. He is known for his bons mots, after all – at one point he says to me,’Honesty is a curse. It will get you charged every time,’ which is pure Wilde – but also, like Wilde, and every hero of a Greek tragedy, he seems to have been the author of his own downfall.

He shakes his head when I put this to him. ‘If I sweep the streets that does not mean my life is totally tragic. It’s not who I am and it doesn’t take away from the fact that I sold millions of records. I know the media don’t get that and it frustrates the hell out of me. I think I’m generous because I don’t have a blanket attitude to the media, despite what it has done to me and what it continues to do to me.’

Blimey. Get arrested. Blame the media. ‘I’m not blaming the media for that. What I mean is… I’m letting you into my home. I’m not saying there are any questions you can’t ask me. Try asking Madonna or Sting some of the questions you have asked me, and someone will step in and tell you you can’t. Interviewing me is a luxury and you should appreciate it. I’m an intelligent man. I’m exciting company. You can analyse me all you like, but please do a good job. Don’t be boring.’

Blimey again. And OK, I’ll try. He comes across in print as being pricklier than he is in person. Actually, he is likeable and funny, once you get past the nervous tension and the drama queeniness. But he seems to have little equilibrium, no shame, and no self-control. What he does have is self-pity, self-destructive impulses and delusions of grandeur. He can seem wounded and spoilt, but also, at times, worldly wise. And he is an odd mix of vanity and self-loathing.

Does he feel like a victim? ‘For other people it may look like I was built up to be knocked down, but actually I don’t have that kind of perspective. I was sweeping, now I’m not sweeping. I suppose on the last day I did try to keep my orange jerkin as a souvenir. It was a weird experience and…’ He laughs. ‘Now you are making me think about it!’

But it sounds as if he’s not the sort of person who has regrets. ‘Know what? I have loads. But lately, I’ve been thinking I don’t have to be that person and behave in that way. I’ve never noticed this before in 47 years.’

How has he not? ‘Because there has been too much hairspray in the way. You don’t notice because even when your life is dysfunctional you think that’s normality.’

I begin a sentence about the fame he enjoyed, or endured, in the 1980s, a time when he was one of the most recognisable people on the planet… But he cuts me off… ‘What do you mean “was”? I still am and always will be. Your talking about me as if I’m not here gets on my nerves. I’m here, in your presence!’

Then he redeems himself. ‘I sound like Gloria Swanson, don’t I? Look, no one can take any of that stuff away from me because it’s mine. I’ve learnt to appreciate what I have. My life is amazing. Being Boy George, putting on a hat and make-up, is amazing. And easy. Being George O’Dowd is the f—ing battle. I still moan as much as I always did, but I stop myself now. When things are kicking off, I can tell myself, “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be nasty, you don’t have to be an a—h—.”‘

I mention that he seems to have a lot of anger just below his surface. ‘I come from a family that explodes. Mine is the great exploding family.’

Does he enjoy exploding? ‘Actually, I don’t. I don’t find it therapeutic. I’ve come to realise that when I snap at people they get hurt. When you care about someone… which is the difference. I care if it is someone in my family. When it’s someone from the record company it doesn’t mater if I shout, Yahhhbllagghh!!! at them.’

Record company executives don’t have feelings? Or is it more that he doesn’t care if they do? Isn’t that a little selfish? ‘You’re trying to narrow me down to a headline aren’t you? Yes Boy George was selfish, but he’s not now. I was a b——, but I recovered.

‘I need to go out and perform to the people who always forgive me for everything I do and that is the Great British public, God bless them. I go out there and feel so lucky. They still sing along with my songs.

‘To be honest, when I started this tour, I thought: “Who is going to want to come and see me after all this time?” But when you get to Norwich and Newcastle, I mean, all these weird people come along to see you, all these old ladies who dance and sing along to Karma Chameleon and shout [he adopts a Geordie accent], “I f—ing love you George.” In Northampton, there were all these stage-door hangers-on and they were my mum’s age; it was really sweet and really funny. I’ve become Barry Manilow!’

He can laugh at himself, and that is his redeeming feature. As well as being a builder, his father, Jerry, was a boxer, one who used to beat up his wife. By wearing make-up as a teenager, George was rejecting his father’s masculinity, clearly. But he may also have begun wearing black lipstick to get his father’s attention (he was one of six children, after all).

He still craves attention, which may partly explain his almost Tourette’s-like tendency to insult people. ‘It sounds like a name-drop, but Elton John rang me up the other day and it was really exciting,’ he says. ‘Elton John has my number! I had a barney with him a couple of years ago and I loved the fact that I had pissed him off [he had called him a ‘humourless grand old dame’]. I can’t believe I’ve registered with him. He was fuming, “I’m going to kill that Boy George!”‘ A result.

Does he fall in love easily? ‘I fall in lust easily, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in love. I look back and think was that love? But I’ve never been in that stage where I think I don’t want anyone else.’

According to his memoirs, his longest relationship was with Jon Moss, the drummer of Culture Club, who is now married with children. He wrote the band’s first hit Do You Really Want to Hurt Me about Moss. (Actually, it was the other way round. Boy George would throw bottles at Moss and once broke his fingers.) I ask if Moss was the love of his life. ‘I thought so but, with hindsight, I’m not sure he was. He was certainly the great drama of my life, but I’m not sure I love him more than I love my mother. No, I definitely love my mother more. Was it love? I cried. He punched me. There was music.’

Was he ever beaten up because he was gay? ‘By my own brothers. By kids at school, every day from the age of six they would shout “poof” at me. School was a hellhole.’

Did he ever fight back? ‘I can fight but I don’t like fighting. You scratch your nails.’

What about ‘muscle Marys’ such as Rupert Everett: gay men who work out? ‘I’m much tougher than Rupert Everett. I could knock him out in five seconds. Muscled men are the most scared because they are building a wall. We are the only culture who identifies with our persecutors, gay men trying to act straight. The toughest ones are the drag queens. They are the suffragettes. They are the warriors. You ain’t a man till you’ve walked in heels.’

John, his business partner, arrives for a meeting and George asks him if he will do him a favour and go out and get a packet of cigarettes.

‘You’re vile,’ George says.

A few minutes later the buzzer sounds again. It is someone called Lady Pat, a man, who is also expected at the meeting. ‘Do you smoke?’ George asks before buzzing him in.

‘No’

‘I hate you’