When he burst into the public consciousness on Top of the Pops back in 1982, instantly sparking generation-dividing debates about whether he was actually a she, it was hard to imagine Boy George ever being anonymous.

Yet these days Boy, or given the fact he is 52, perhaps it would be better to call him George, claims that he can walk down the street unmolested by admirers.

“I don’t get recognised very much in London and I’m certainly not getting recognised at all in America,” says George, who is calling from America via some kind of complicated Skyping arrangement.

“I look so different. I don’t know what people think, that I still look like I did when I was 21? Whether they expect me to have dreadlocks.”

The fault, he says, is almost entirely his own. The dreadlocks are long gone, replaced by a buzz cut and scalp tattoos. And though he retains a fondness for flamboyance with a penchant for big hats and bold strokes of make-up, it has all been hidden away in the darkness of clubs as he carved out a career as a DJ.

“The amount of people that say to friends of mine ‘oh, I thought he was dead’, ” he says with a flash of morbid humour. “I have been out of the mainstream spotlight for so long people are bound to. If your mum doesn’t go to clubs she isn’t going to know what I’m doing.”

Though still in demand as a DJ, the reason he was in America was to go back into the studio to record a new album.

The aptly titled This Is What I Do, which was released this week, is a reminder of what made George Alan O’Dowd famous in the first place.

“It’s a way of prodding people. In a lot of ways I really feel that I am back at the beginning.”

Boy George and Trademark, who had a joint exhibition as part of Liverpool’s Homotopia festival this year.
Boy George and Trademark, who had a joint exhibition as part of Liverpool’s Homotopia festival this year.

On first listen, it is hard to reconcile the gravelly rumble that George sings with now with the breathy, higher pitched vocals so familiar from his Culture Club days and Do You Really Want To Hurt Me or Karma Chameleon.

“Yeah it is definitely deeper, rounder, more butch,” concedes George. “It is an older voice. When I first started out in music I sang mostly through my nose, quite nasally. I think Peter Gabriel said when you are younger you are singing more up to heaven.”

He says his voice now is a truer reflection of who he is. ”Some people spend years trying to be someone they are not. The best option is to be who you are.”

The songs on the album are also more organic and grown up rather than “some kind of full blown pop attempt that I hired David Guetta to produce” that he felt people would expect of him.

“I always wanted to do a record that suited me at 52, not something that was kind of self conscious and too needy.”

The video for the first single, King of Everything, finds him in reflective mood. It was filmed at the local gym where George grew up in South London and depicts a boxer and his disappointed wife. George, who has four brothers and a sister, was raised around boxing but knew his Irish émigré father was disappointed that he showed more interest in pop music and fashion than pugilism.

“My brothers were boxers and my dad tried very hard to get me to. I box now but only for training. It is part of my fitness regime.

“He is dead now but he would have been so pleased to see me in a pair of gloves, it would have made him so happy. I think about that when I box, how he would be kind of interfering, telling me to hit properly and ‘put your arm up’. ”

“But the song is basically about kind of messing up and human frailty which I think a lot of people can relate to.”

George’s own misfortunes have played out very much in public. There have been battles with drug addiction and community service and court ordered rehabilitation for filing a false burglary report. He also served four months of a 15 months prison sentence after being convicted of the false imprisonment of a Norwegian man he claimed had hacked his computer.

Boy George back in 1988
Boy George back in 1988

Though he has “made a very successful career” out of pouring his emotions over break ups into song, George says that he is learning to draw a veil over some aspects of his past.

“Talking about it is like being dissected like a frog. Whereas 20 years ago I would probably have made that the centre of my universe I decided after going through all that stuff that I didn’t want to ever again.

“Having your say is overrated. One of the nicest things in the world when you have been through something extreme is to be able to come through that and say ‘Actually, I just want to forget about it’.

“Also a lot of my early songs were quite, you know...victims, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me. I didn’t really want to be that person. It is not a reflection of who I am now. I am a practising Buddhist and I, naively or not, believe I have a degree of control in how my environment is and that was something I never believed when I was younger.”

George has enjoyed rediscovering America after years away following his imprisonment when there were fears that it would prevent him from ever getting a visa again.

“It is great because it means I get to repaint the canvas, it feels very exciting actually, a bit like the first time I came here.”

When Culture Club debuted there he recalls America was expecting this blue-eyed soul boy and didn’t know what to make of these New Romantic invaders.

“We went to Long Island and did a concert for a radio station that was playing Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. It was put in a plain sleeve so nobody knew what we looked like. When we came out on stage people visibly gasped. Back then it was like they were all in Cheers and we were wearing these mad alien, quasi religious kind of outfits. We must have looked like we landed from another planet.

“Even though there had been things like Bowie and glam rock, we, and particularly me, were another level for America.

“People have always said that I probably wouldn’t have been as successful in America if I’d been from there. It was like because I was imported they weren’t necessarily responsible for me. They could say ‘He’s from the UK. They’re all like that’. I was a foreign weirdo so it was okay.”

To support his album release he is back home in the UK and embarking on a short tour next month, during which he will be stopping off at the Glee Club on November 12 for a gig postponed from November 5.

Boy George back in 1984
Boy George back in 1984

It is likely that the audience will be packed with old friends and family, for George and Birmingham go way back.

“I’ve got a big extended family in Birmingham, nieces, nephews, cousins. I spent my childhood going to Birmingham because my grandmother lived there so we used to go for a summer holiday.

“It was ‘grite fuun’, ” he says in his best Peaky Blinders patois. ‘‘I’d be six weeks in Birmingham and come back talking in a silly accent and people would really pick on me at school.

“I lived in Walsall when I was about 19 for a year. Martin Degville, who was in Sigue Sigue Sputnik, lived there in Goodall Street. I met Martin at a punk weekender in Bournemouth. We became friends and I started to come up to Birmingham to go to The Rum Runner and all those clubs that were happening around that time. I ended up coming for a year and just had a fantastic time. I had a job in the Bullring and my aunt lived in Edgbaston, she still does, so I was allowed to leave home under the premise that my aunt would keep an eye on me. I would love to go back. I am sure it is totally different.”

He also seems flattered by the idea that this unloved corner of Walsall where only a shop selling dress making materials seems to thrive, should be enlivened by a plaque commemorating his residence.

“Yeah! I think Martin Degville would be very up for it,” he chuckles.

* Boy George will be at The Glee Club on November 12. For ticket details contact www.livenation.co.uk/artist/boy-george-tickets