At the height of his fame, George Michael had two options – both bad. If the pop superstar had told the world he was gay in the 1980s, his screaming, adoring, grabby female fans might have been afraid to touch him. Misinformation about Aids had begun to seep into society. Coming out, though, would have at least meant that he was free. If the Wham! singer hid his sexuality, he’d be the subject of relentless rumour and press intrusion and, when it finally became impossible to conceal it any longer, he’d be faced with accusations of hypocrisy for living a double life, for decades, in the public eye. The path he took, in the end, was the latter, but it all imploded in 1998 when he was arrested in a Los Angeles public toilet for “lewd conduct” (he was cruising for sex with men). That incident, and the media frenzy that ensued, is the subject of Channel 4’s heart-wrenching yet frustratingly incomplete documentary, George Michael: Outed.
The two-parter, which arrives seven years after Michael’s death aged 53, combines never-before broadcast audio of the singer with extensive interviews with his cousin Andros Georgiou and Michael’s long-time partner Kenny Goss. Memories of Michael’s angst and fragility are still very raw for them both, with Georgiou at one point reaching for a bottle of beer to distract from the tears filling his eyes. Goss speaks of the disparity between Michael the stage performer, overflowing with confidence, and Michael the introvert, as he sometimes was in private. And Georgiou talks of how “99 per cent of George’s life was public, but he had to have that 1 per cent” – his sexuality – to himself.
