I cried when I heard the news. I have loved the subject of this week’s Crush column since I was four years old, when his jeans and fringed leather made me understand that style is something for everyone – you only need the panache to carry it off. George Michael, gone far too soon at the age of 53, had panache in spades.
I remember that Faith was the first time I really saw him, and it was enough to fall in love: the designer stubble, the stonewash jeans (that I begged my mother to buy me when we were next at M&S), that thick wavy hair, the easy smile. He was beautiful. I knew I was going to marry George Michael. He had started life like me, the child of an immigrant (Greek Cypriot for him; Nigerian for me), but George was obviously special. His songwriting, already notable when he was a teenager, still awes me (“Guilty feet have got no rhythm”). And his voice was so soulful, full of a yearning I appreciate more and more.
There was darkness thrown in, too, as he noted on his Desert Island Discs (“I suffer like crazy… but my career always just seems to right itself”). But for all of that darkness thrown his way (not least the crass tabloid equating of his sexual orientation with some sort of moral failing), George remained generous and funny (see him in the original Carpool Karaoke guest slot and his masterful way of poking fun at himself in his cameo in Ricky Gervais’s Extras). He helped me express longing, or fear, and of course, love. What a gift he was. I’m still crying.
