"Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" by Culture Club

Part of the appeal of Culture Club to little 12 year-old me was the fact that Boy George used to drive my father crazy; we'd been rocking out to this song on the radio for months before he finally saw a picture of the Boy, at which point my father's full-on closet-case hypocrisy revealed itself for what it was. Fortunately it happened in the TV room and not on the highway.

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? was a huge smash all over the world, propelling the band to stardom and their debut album, Kissing to Be Clever, along with them; fame being what it is - namely a hideous bitch goddess - the band's success proved to be its undoing, not that the inevitable descent into tabloid ignominy wasn't as hugely entertaining as it was tragic. While revelations of George's heroin abuse didn't much interest me, the stories about his affair with bandmate Jon Moss* did add an element to the scandal which was then quite unique.

*The object and subject of one of my most long-standing schoolboy crushes.
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