Boy George will be 50 next year, so it seems a bit daft to be calling him 'Boy'.

But 'Old George' doesn't quite have the same ring, particularly given that he's looking so, well  -  let's say, exotic - in a shocking pink hat and enough dazzling eye make-up to put Blackpool in the shade.

Now Boy George has, of course, always been in-your-face since he first burst onto the music scene in the early 1980s with his band Culture Club and with hits such as Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want To Hurt Me.

He was the brash, flash peacock of pop with a never-ending stream of bitchy quotes.

Then we had the bad times. Fat George, the despairing heroin addict, made to do community service in New York (after pleading guilty to falsely reporting a burglary at his flat) and, more recently, Jailbird George, serving time for falsely imprisoning a male escort (something he has always denied). 

But what to make of this exotic creature sitting here now? I've read about the seediness; been warned about the downright rudeness, but I get Honest George. 'Forget everything you've heard about me,' he says.

'I'm not a bitch. I'm not mean-spirited. Yes, I can chuck out a one-liner when my back's against the wall, but what I've said in the past doesn't represent me. A few years ago I looked at what I've said and thought, "My God, that's all I do. They're wheeling me out to be bitchy."

A lot of that was to do with the way I felt inside. What I do now is I try to think about what I'm saying. I think, "Is this helpful? No, so shut up."'

With a tour to promote  -  the Here & Now, with fellow 1980s stars Jason Donovan, Jimmy Somerville, Belinda Carlisle and Midge Ure, as well as the release of his own single Pentonville Blues, written during his months in prison  -  George is trying very hard.

The bad stuff happened during a three-year addiction to cocaine. He's been clean for two years and regularly attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings. He says he's more like his younger self, George before the heroin, before the madness. But, he's had to do a lot of grovelling too.

Take Elton John. In his high-old days, Boy George called him 'a humourless grand old dame'. 'To be honest, there was a part of me that got a kick out of having a drama with him,' says George.

'But it was very childish. I bumped into David Furnish [Elton's partner] at a fashion event and I knew I should say sorry. I went over sheepishly thinking he was going to make me feel really small, but he was so adorable  -  so gracious and kind.

'It made me feel even worse. I got a call from Elton the next day saying thank you. He wrote to me in prison.

'The letters he sent were such a help. Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas and Holly Johnston wrote too. People I didn't even know were friends wrote every week. It was very touching and, really, the only time I got upset was reading them.

'Words are so powerful. They can move people and hurt them, too. Bitchy words do hurt people, but I've got to a point in my life where I can't keep apologising. Now, I don't want to let people down again  -  that keeps me on my toes. I'm done with all that stuff now. I've gone back to being who I really am.'

This Who-I-Really-Am George is thoroughly likeable and astonishingly honest, even when I ask about George Michael, who is partway through his eight-week prison sentence for driving under the influence of drugs when we meet.

Because talking about George Michael reminds Boy George of the four months of a 15-month sentence he served in prison last year, which he has never spoken about at length.

He says, 'When George Michael got sentenced, it all came back to me and I was with him. You just go numb  -  completely numb.

'You go into survival mode; shut down. You don't know what's going to happen. After the trial you're taken downstairs, put in a room, the door gets locked and from then on it's a mystery.

'I was with George Michael in that holding cell under the court. I was with him, handcuffed, in that hideous police van. I was with him arriving at Pentonville prison and having that kind of physical search. I relived the whole thing. I felt so, so upset. I don't think I've been that upset since it happened to me.

'Pentonville is just like a classic Victorian prison and when you get taken through the door on the landing, it's like being in a movie. It's got the safety nets and people shouting things over the balcony. You're so disorientated.

They're like, "We're putting you here, putting you there, giving you a medical." Here and there you encounter sweet people. The nurse was lovely.

'She was a big Culture Club fan and said, "Why are you here?" I was like, "Oh, don't ask."' Such honesty is a new experience for George, so self-deprecation helps. Still, he was jailed for false imprisonment.

What about shame; remorse? 'That fallen star thing is a bit of a cliche' he says, before conceding, 'but cliches exist because they're often annoyingly true. Maybe in the past I was quite belligerent.' (No maybe about it George, but go on...) 

Culture Club - Jon Moss, Boy George, Roy Hay and Mikey Craig,

'If somebody had asked me before, "Do you have regrets?" I would have said, "no", because it kind of felt too much like surrender. I think I'm grown-up enough now to say, "Yes, there are things I regret, but there's nothing I can do about that.

'Even saying I've grown up is something I couldn't have said before. When you're inside there isn't time for shame. Yes, you feel sorry for yourself. I was moved out of the main prison wing because someone took my picture [which then appeared in a tabloid newspaper].

'I went crazy about that photo. I said to the governor, "This is disgusting. Just move me to solitary. I want to be away from these people." I thought, "Come on, show a bit of humanity".

Then, an amazing thing happened. I got moved to solitary and I remember lying in the cell alone, watching Obama's inauguration on the TV, thinking, "What a contrast. I could have been there", when the door opened and a priest was standing there. We chatted for two hours - not really about God.

Afterwards, I suddenly thought, "I'm not going to get through this if I keep feeling sorry for myself." I became aware that I had a choice  -  even about being happy. I thought, "I don't have to be unhappy here." It was just a mini-revelation. I didn't have to let people rattle me or push my buttons.

'That was a big changing point for me. I don't know if it was a spiritual encounter  -  I don't want to get Cliff Richard all excited.

'I just think it was because that priest was kind  -  and nonjudgmental. He promised to phone my mum for me, too, which was really sweet. You don't get phone calls for about two weeks, so I was so desperate to let my family know I was OK.'

George was one of six children born to his Irish parents, Dinah and Gerald O'Dowd, in Bexley, Kent. His father, a builder, was, he says, 'strict and my mum went along with my dad.

'If dad banged his fists on the table, the argument was over,' he says. 'It was normal, when I was a kid, to get a slap or a punch. My dad was teetotal, but I always think he was a dry drunk  -  he had the behaviour of an alcoholic but he didn't drink.

'He was really contradictory. When you thought he was going to completely lose it, he'd be completely rational. Like when I came out as gay when I was a teenager. He put his arm round me and told me he loved me.

Said I was still his son. But you'd do something that you thought was minor, like climbing on the roof of the shed, and he'd absolutely explode.' 

'There's a lot we have in common': He has been writing to fellow pop star George Michael who is currently serving time in prison

George couldn't wait to grow up; couldn't wait for a different life. 'I think the honest thing to say is I wanted to be liked,' he says. 'I knew from a very early age that I wasn't like other boys. I was called names, so I knew that, whatever " poofter" was wasn't a good thing, from about the age of six.

You hear that long before you have any idea what it is that's different about you. I think growing up, being made to feel like an outsider makes you defensive.'

Defensiveness, belligerence, call it what you will, the young Boy George had it in spades. 'When I first came out my parents didn't want to talk about it,' he says. 'So, for the next few years, I rubbed it in their faces. I'd sit in the front room and tease my hair into these gravity-defying shapes and put on loads of make-up.

'This,' he gestures to his face, 'is a mask, but then it attracts more attention, so it's a contradiction. In the early part of my career, I'd never have gone out in public without my make-up on. I wouldn't even open the hotel door unless I was in full drag.

When room service came to my room, I'd grab the food tray and shut the door. 'Now, I go out in my civvies all the time. I still like dressing up.

Sometimes I'll do a documentary and they'll say, "Can we do you without make-up?" and I'll say, "No, would Joan Collins let you do her without make-up?

No, and neither will I." It's not that I think I'm unattractive without make-up, it's that this is my public persona. But I'm not a prisoner to my image like I used to be.

'Sometimes, being in my regalia is a palaver,' he says. 'You do have to take a deep breath if you're in public places because you get a lot of attention that's not always positive.

Community service: He was ordered to spend five days working for the Department of Sanitation after pleading guilty to falsely reporting a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment

People shout things at you. It can get quite frenzied. I'm not a big party person anymore, but obviously I work in clubs as a DJ and sometimes it's a bit daunting, walking through a crowded club dressed up. People knock your hat off. Grab you. They're all drunk and high.'

Which of course he was too until 2 March 2008. 'I have an addictive personality,' he says. 'I got onto cocaine when I was in New York. I was around other people doing drugs and I was trying to be cool.

One particular evening I had a couple of glasses of wine and a little dab [of cocaine]. I thought, "That's nice", and there you go, I was back where I was. I had almost two years of being clean before I went to prison.

It wasn't because of what happened [the false imprisonment]. It was because I was sick of being out of it. I'd been praying for the best part of a year for it to stop, for the addiction to end.'

A friend introduced him to Narcotics Anonymous and the concept of recovery. 'I got clean before [he overcame a heroin addiction in the 1980s] but I used to think, "I'm through this. I don't need any help."

'I've learnt I can't do it on my own. No man is an island. All those cliches are true. Recovery gives you your humanity back, which is a wonderful thing.

'You see other people going through the same thing  -  looking more beautiful, healthy, radiant, eyes sparkling. It constantly reminds you of where you were.

'But there are consequences for my behaviour. That's a fact of life. In my case, lots of awful things happened that will always be with me. [Two of his friends died from overdoses.]

They don't inform my every waking hour, but there are times I do think about them. The next time I want to go to the US, it's going to be a real problem. I might not be allowed in because I now have a criminal record.

'People go to hell in addiction. It's a horrible, horrible illness. But me and George Michael are very lucky because we have amazing lives to go back to when we come out of prison  -  if we want those lives.'

Then he tells me that he's written to George Michael, 'There's not a lot you can say,' he says.

'You just send your love and let people know you're thinking of them  -  all the cliches, but they do help. I've known George for quite a long time.

'There's a lot we have in common and it's getting more like that every day. I'm not saying I'm the perfect person, but I think I've finally accepted this monster I've created. People always judge a book by its cover  -  wrongly most of the time.'

Boy George's single, Pentonville Blues, is released on 18 October. The Here & Now 10th Anniversary Tour 2011 starts on 24 June. It features Boy George, Jason Donovan, Jimmy Somerville, Belinda Carlisle, Midge Ure, A Flock of Seagulls, Pepsi & Shirlie. For more details, visit www.tdpromo.com