George Michael rose to fame because the fun-loving, golden boy of pop with a behavior of stuffing badminton shuttlecocks into his tight shorts in order to additional his enchantment to ladies.
Together with his hooped gold earrings, bleached hair, pretend tan and puppy-dog eyes, the youthful star spent a lot of the Eighties gamely enjoying the a part of a chart- topping pop star alongside Andrew Ridgeley as one half of Wham! — a duo famed for his or her roster of upbeat hits, together with Membership Tropicana, I'm Your Man and Wake Me Up Earlier than You Go-Go.
These early years noticed newspapers continually briefed about his rampant heterosexuality. On one event, Michael's cousin, Andros Georgiou, boasted he was within the behavior of sleeping with '4 women an evening' throughout excursions.
Pictured: George Michael together with his mother and father, Kyriacos and Lesley at his 30th birthday celebration
On one other, he went on a sequence of very public dates with the modern Hollywood actress Brooke Shields.
A well-known, and extremely profitable, PR stunt noticed Michael lead the world to imagine he'd pursued an affair with Kathy Jeung, an Asian mannequin who appeared, scantily clad, in one in all his raunchy music movies.
But whereas it undoubtedly helped shift data, this picture of a starry Lothario was — as we now know — a whole fabrication. For, as he would usually inform the world in later years, Michael all the time knew he was homosexual.
The very fact was hinted at in his 1990 autobiography, Naked, co-written with the journalist Tony Parsons.
In his introduction, the singer, who was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, introduced that the womanising pop singer George Michael was little greater than a fictional character he had determined to play.
'I created a person the world may love in the event that they selected to, somebody who may realise my desires and make me a star,' he stated.
His double life, by then an open secret within the music world, had at this level been recognized to shut mates and a few relations for years.
After rising up in a working class a part of north London, Michael shot to fame with Wham! and shortly grew to become seen a starry eyed Lothario (left, as an eight-year-old and proper, in 1984)
On the age of 19, Michael had informed plenty of confidantes, together with one in all his two sisters, that he was sexually drawn to males. Nonetheless, they suggested him towards telling his mother and father or the broader public.
'I don't assume they have been attempting to guard my profession or their careers. I believe they have been simply considering of my dad,' he later stated, explaining how each he and people near him have been compelled to battle with the double life he discovered himself residing.
'Quickly after that, every part modified. Aids was simply not one thing I used to be ready to convey into my mother and father' life. I used to be too younger and immature to know that I used to be sacrificing as a lot as I used to be.'
The conservative household background that nurtured him influenced a lot of George Michael's later life.
The son of a hard-working Greek Cypriot immigrant who married an English dancer and ran a restaurant, George was raised in a working-class a part of Finchley, North London, and indulged as the one boy within the household.
Within the early years of his profession, newspapers have been usually briefed on tales of Michael's rampant hetrosexuality (pictured, with band-mate Shirlie Holliman whereas filming the video for Membership Tropicana in 1983)
Success finally allowed the Panayiotou household to maneuver out to Radlett in Hertfordshire, the place George attended Bushey Meads Faculty and met Andrew Ridgeley, with whom he shaped Wham! on the tender age of 18.
However the poster boy of Smash Hits journal spent the following 20 years of his profession pursuing homosexual liaisons and at the very least two long-term amorous affairs, in situations of secrecy, whereas concurrently being one of the crucial well-known males on the planet.
This masquerade was at occasions extremely traumatic and probably contributed to his common bouts of melancholy.
It additionally left him with a lifelong persecution advanced that noticed him continually complain about what one journal known as 'the pressure of his movie star standing'.
Because of this, he by no means actually embraced the stardom that noticed him promote 100 million data, have 11 number-one hits and amass an estimated private fortune of £105 million.
Extremely smart and charming, he'd additionally rage on the scrutiny his stardom introduced or moan at perceived injustices visited upon him by the pop trade or the forces of legislation and order.
Way back to 1990, after he'd conquered the U.S. together with his debut solo album Religion (which bought 25 million copies worldwide) and was releasing the follow-up Hear With out Prejudice Vol 1, he devoted a canopy story within the extremely influential Calendar journal (headlined 'the reluctant pop star') to complaining about how he 'lives in hope of decreasing the pressure of his movie star standing'.
Michael by no means actually embraced the stardom that noticed him promote over 100million data over a profession that spanned 4 many years (pictured, Michael with Boy George in 1987)
No much less a star than Frank Sinatra was moved to put in writing an open letter urging him to 'loosen up'. However this stellar recommendation was ignored.
Even after popping out within the late Nineties, George spent a lot of his life behind the partitions of his North London mansion, smoking huge quantities of marijuana and venturing out on an virtually each day foundation to pursue sexual liaisons with males on Hampstead Heath.
The unique determination to steer a double life was at the very least partly inspired by the music trade, which — in an period the place homosexual rights have been nonetheless of their infancy — felt that homosexuality may injury a performer's industrial enchantment.
Wham! — which George as soon as dubbed 'all white tooth and silk shorts' — was signed virtually immediately and had in a single day success with the 1982 hit Younger Weapons (Go For It).
He and Ridgeley bought themselves on confidence and sexual brio, although Michael later insisted this, too, was a facade, saying he 'pretended to be sexually assured', however was as an alternative deeply insecure about his seems.
After Wham! break up amicably in 1986, Michael promptly launched into a solo profession, with the album Religion making him one of many largest stars in music on either side of the Atlantic.
Whereas in Wham! Michael and bandmate Andrew Ridgeley bought themselves on confidence and sexual brio - though, the singer later stated for him this was a facade
But that solely served to lift his obvious emotions of concern about his sexuality changing into public, inflicting him to step out of the limelight after the 1988 tour that adopted its launch.
'I used to be frightened of my life-style possibly eradicating my capability to connect with what I did and I freaked out,' he later recalled.
'I stated: "I don't assume I wish to make any extra movies. I'll by no means tour once more." I stated: "I believe I've to step again." '
In 1991, shortly after the discharge of Hear With out Prejudice Vol 1, he met a Brazilian man known as Anselmo Feleppa in a lodge foyer and fell head over heels in love.
Just a few months later, nevertheless, Feleppa found he had Aids. Michael would spend the following 4 years secretly nursing him. Feleppa's demise in 1993 threw George into what he later described as a 'depressive spiral'.
No sooner had he began to get well from his bereavement, nevertheless, than Michael realized his mom had most cancers.
Her demise in 1997 threw him additional into melancholy, a situation that ran in his household.
He started taking massive portions of Prozac and smoking robust 'skunk' hashish.
'When it comes to coming near saying I don't wish to dwell, that will have been after my mum died,' he later admitted.
'I had this overwhelming feeling that the perfect was behind me. I so beloved my mum and revered her.'
Not serving to was the considerably solitary nature of Michael's skilled life: not like different profitable artists, he usually labored alone, writing his personal lyrics, enjoying devices, overseeing album art work and directing movies.
However he would go a decade with-out touring.
On THE private entrance, it's usually claimed that Michael's sexuality was lastly made spectacularly public in 1998, when he was arrested in a Beverly Hills public rest room after propositioning an undercover cop.
Michael would often endorse this line, telling interviewers that he was 'subconsciously' attempting to be caught in the course of the infamous incident with the intention to permit himself to be open about his sexuality.
Michael loved a long-term relationship with Texan artwork seller Kenny Goss (proper), however the pair broke up in 2011. His final boyfriend Fadi Fawaz (left) is a London-based hair stylist
Pictured: Michael shares an embrace together with his boyfriend Fadi Fawaz throughout a vacation
But this model of occasions is a fantasy: he had truly chosen to talk publicly about his love life in November 1997, months earlier than the arrest, in a newspaper interview with Parsons. It was headlined 'I used to be so fortunate to have had Anselmo in my life' and mentioned at size his relationship together with his late lover.
Both method, lastly acknowledging in public that he was homosexual was not the discharge mates hoped. As a substitute, it appeared to supply Michael with solely a brief respite from his issues.
On the time of his LA arrest, he was in an 'open' relationship with Kenny Goss, a Texan artwork seller.
In 2006, his sexual urge for food landed him in bother with the legislation after he was escorted from the Park Lane Hilton having been discovered wandering the corridors in a balaclava seeking a person he'd met in a bar and organized to fulfill for intercourse. It later emerged he was within the flawed lodge.
In 2009, he reportedly started a newspaper interview at his dwelling in Highgate by sitting at a desk with 'a bag of grass and half-a-dozen drugs' casually displayed on it.
Shortly afterwards, he break up from Goss — whom he known as one in all simply three males he ever actually beloved, together with Feleppa and his remaining boyfriend, hairstylist Fadi Fawaz.
By 2011, when he fell ailing with pneumonia, it grew to become clear that George Michael's manic life-style was in peril of killing him.
But the promiscuity and drug- taking continued. Even when he wasn't residing a double life, it appeared little may stem this vastly gifted, however troubled, pop musician's urge for food for self-destruction.
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