The News Boy George Fabulous

Boy George and the male escort he imprisoned were behaving like “drug-crazed idiots” during the infamous incident which led to the singer's conviction, his barrister admitted today.

Adrian Waterman said the star's continuing battle with cocaine addiction contributed to his actions in April last year.

He called for the musician – whose real name is George O'Dowd – to receive a suspended rather than custodial sentence at a hearing today.

Mr Waterman told Snaresbrook Crown Court, in East London: “He's on the way up. The fact that he is, when sober, a kind and generous man means there is no shortage of people to help him through his recovery.”

The barrister said O'Dowd would need time to pay £5,000 costs and added that many celebrities had written to the court in his defence.

At his trial, where O'Dowd was found guilty of false imprisonment, the court heard that he told police that he had chained Norwegian Audun Carlsen to his bed in his flat in Shoreditch, East London, in April 2007 while he investigated alleged tampering with his computer.

O'Dowd and Mr Carlsen first met through a social networking site primarily for gay and bisexual men and they parted on good terms, even though the former Culture Club frontman suspected Mr Carlsen had hacked into his computer. The singer paid the younger man £300 of the £400 they had agreed.

In the next few weeks, they exchanged e-mails in which the singer accused Mr Carlsen of breaking into his computer system but then said that he would be “perfectly happy to see you naked asap”. He referred to Mr Carlsen's “heavenly butt” and eventually they agreed to meet for a second time.

It was when Mr Carlsen returned to the flat that things took a violent turn. After calling Mr Carlsen into his bedroom, O'Dowd and another man leapt on him, wrestled him to the floor and started beating him.

The court heard that, during the attack, O'Dowd was screaming “F****** whore! Now you're going to get what you deserve”. He said he was dragged along the floor towards the bed and a manacle was put on his right hand and attached to a hook drilled in the wall.

The second man left, and O'Dowd produced a plastic box containing chains, sex toys and leather straps, Snaresbrook Crown court was told.

Mr Carlsen told the court he was then able to use the handcuffs as a tool to unscrew the hook from the wall. He ran to the door with O'Dowd pursuing him, lashing out with a metal chain. He managed to escape and ran out on to the street in just his underwear screaming for help.

O'Dowd told police: “I asked him to come (back to my flat) because I wanted to find out if this guy had borrowed my stuff.

“I got a friend there because I wanted to make sure he didn't leave so I could check the computer and his phone. The friend was just there in case he tried to stab me or take a hammer to me.”

He denied to police that he punched or assaulted Mr Carlsen or swung a chain at him as the escort fled the flat, and suggested the bruises Mr Carlsen sustained could have been due to the fact that he was HIV positive.

Mr Carlsen told the court that O'Dowd concocted the story about computer tampering so he could punish him for not having sex during the first meeting. He said: “I think he couldn't handle the refusal – me not having sex with him.”

The defence claimed that the dispute was over whether Mr Carlsen had stolen photographs and the suggestion it was because Mr Carlsen refused to have sex with O'Dowd on the previous occasion was “entire fantasy or a lie”.

O'Dowd, who swept the streets of New York in orange overalls in 2006 as his punishment for wasting police time after admitting to falsely reporting a burglary at his Manhattan apartment, looked grim-faced as the jury found him guilty of falsely imprisoning the male escort.

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