The New Romantics didn’t do much for me but like everyone else, some of the songs did. Especially Culture Club’s first hit in 1982.

It was hard not to be entranced by Boy George when he first appeared, with his dreadlocks and make-up, sarcastic wit, and the smoky voice that sang this reggae-lite tune.

Do You Really Want To Hurt Me was impossible not to love – at least from where I was listening – and like me George clearly loved his reggae.

That was even clearer on the B-side of the 12-inch, a dub version featuring a rapper called Papa Weasel.

Culture Club immediately became stars, emblematic of the Eighties and of the New Romantic movement, although they seem to have been rebranded as ‘New Wave’ these days – a tag that seems far removed for me.

Long after the band broke up and George became a staple of the tabloids with drugs, death and sex all featuring in various scandalous tales, I found myself writing about him on a fairly regular basis.

I even went to his house in Hampstead – chosen, he gleefuly told me, for its easy access to the cottaging hotspots of the heath outside.

He was then, and surely still is, an incorrigible chaser of controversy and newspaper headlines. And he still makes music that appeals, even if it no longer troubles the charts.

The last time I saw him live, at Shepherds Bush in 2006, he had returned to the pop-reggae style that brought him his first hit; since then he has reunited Culture Club.

But this is still his finest moment.