It's a busy business being Boy George nowadays. He is a superstar DJ, has a solo album out in a few weeks and writes a readable newspaper column. Lately he has also been playing his late friend Leigh Bowery in the West End musical Taboo, a role that requires him to look like he has been attacked by muggers armed only with gaffer tape and a tablecloth. He has replaced his former drug addiction with a compulsion to take on multiple careers.
Quite where Culture Club fit into all this now is another matter. Although the band rode the 1980s pop wave with Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, there never really was a band remotely like them. They were played in fetish clubs while George became the bitchy queen idolised by beery blokes and grannies. Their personnel included a drummer from the Damned, a reggae bass player, a rock guitarist and, most remarkably, a gender-bending, Bowie-fixated vocalist who sang subtle anthems about gay love.
Reformed since 1998, Culture Club don't need to play this gig: George, for one, could earn as much from one night as a DJ. Their re-emergence, in a rather garish circus tent, could be embarrassing - but instead it has the feel of a public atonement to public and bandmates for the way it all went horribly wrong, thanks to heroin and the collapse of George's affair with drummer Jon Moss, an affair that was reputedly the creative spark behind the band.
After an opening It's a Miracle, George doesn't miss a trick, and the place goes absolutely wild. Thin again, in a fetching fedora, the singer remains a dazzling combination of a distinctive, pleading voice and razor-sharp wit. "Come on, George!" shouts someone. "I am coming on," he quips.
The show is less nostalgic than you'd expect. With pop having regressed to beery blokes with guitars, Culture Club no longer sound revolutionary but surreal - which is equally affecting, especially when George interrupts a song to laugh: "Will you shut up? I'm singing a fucking ballad!"
Guitarist Roy Hay's hi-fi salesman coat aside, when the band revisit the 1980s it is with soul and not trousers. During Victims ("I was 22 when I wrote this. Boy do I understand it now"), George wanders across to Moss and the poignancy is visible. Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? still sounds fresh and otherworldly, as if Culture Club have somehow managed to sidestep time. Calmer, yes, but still among pop's most enduring chameleons.
