He might have sold more than 50 million albums and been a flamboyant sexual revolutionary, the face of the androgynous 1980s, but in the past few years Boy George has been more closely associated with overindulgence.

Last year he served four months in prison for the false imprisonment of a Norwegian male escort, and in August 2006, to the pleasure of almost every media outlet on earth, he was sweeping the New York sidewalks in Chinatown in a luminous jacket, doing community service after pleading guilty to falsely reporting a burglary.

And it had all been going so well. There had been 16 years of sobriety after his younger brother David made a TV appearance to expose his drug habit in 1986 and, that same year, Michael Rudetsky, his friend and co-writer, died at George’s home. There was also an arrest for heroin possession in a police raid called Operation Culture.

Now, in April 2010, he has been clean for two years and has a new single, Amazing Grace, and an album to promote. Propelled by an 11-night sell-out run at London’s Leicester Square Theatre over Christmas, George is taking his Up Close And Personal show, mixing Culture Club material with solo songs and covers, to the nation.

“I’m not trying to reclaim my pop crown,” he cackles. “I’ve been releasing records for 20 years that haven’t always been hits, so it’s not like I’m trying to turn back time. If the single sells really well that’s great, but it’s not what I’m necessarily looking for. Whether it’s a hit or not doesn’t matter.

“The show worked so well in London, in terms of people’s reaction and the performance, so we’re touring. There are stripped-down moments with just me and a piano as well as the band stuff. There is still an audience out there for me – a loyal one.”

George will run his trademark vocals over the jazz he loved as a child as well as the silky dance pop he has written and recorded recently with long-term collaborators John Themis, who wrote the 2005 Eurovision entry, and German producer Kinky Roland.

The lyrics to Amazing Grace were penned in prison, where George spent his hours re-reading books such as JD Salinger’s tale of rebellion and angst, The Catcher In The Rye, and John Kennedy Toole’s cult classic A Confederacy Of Dunces.

“The last couple of years I’ve had to find a lot of grace in terms of the experiences I had,” he says. “Prison was a very alien environment to me. There were times where I had to draw on my reserves, doing things that were humiliating and uncomfortable.

“If you are someone like me, who has a loathing for authority, then it is one of the most difficult experiences imaginable.”

It’s been a busy time since he was released. He was rejected for the final Celebrity Big Brother, he has sung on Mark Ronson’s forthcoming album and started a drink and drugs-free nightclub, DOSE at London’s Proud Camden.

“It’s a place for people in recovery to go where there is no temptation,” he says. “There are difficult moments but if you are in the right frame of mind you can get through anything.

“Life is about your mental state, your attitude, your sense of optimism.”

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