'I'm A Celebrity': Boy George reveals his father never told him he was proud

I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! contestant Boy George has said his father never said he was proud of him.

The Culture Club star - who during his 40 year career has had three Number 1 singles, and won three BRIT Awards, a Grammy Award and three Ivor Novello Awards - revealed to his fellow campmates his dad never seemed impressed with his success.

The Karma Chameleon singer, real name George O'Dowd, said: “I was playing at the Albert Hall and it was kind of a big gig, it was kind of early on and my sister’s best friend’s husband said to my dad, ‘You must be really proud of him?’ My dad goes, ‘Yeah, he does what he does and I do what I do.’ It was weird.

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He added: “There was always this sense that I needed to be kept on my feet. I think that comment was about, ‘Don’t blow smoke up his a**e because it’s not good for him.’”

Boy George, 61, went on: “Or my mum used to say, ‘You never say you love me’ and he’d say, ‘I’m here aren’t I?’”

The Do Your Really Want To Hurt Me singer grew up in southeast London, the second of five children to mother Dinah and father Jerry, a builder. His father died in 2004.

Boy George said: “My dad was a builder, owned his own firm. He was a gambler. He would take £10,000 and put it on a dog. And no one got paid, that was one of the reasons I never went to work for my dad. I saw my brothers didn't get paid.

"Dad would say, ‘Don’t answer the door'… the bailiffs, or the gas man was coming…"

Comedian Babatunde Aleshe told him: “This generation, all we do is tell our children that we love them.”

Boy George replied: “You should.”

The singer joined rugby player Mike Tindall and comedian Seann Walsh to take part in the latest trial of Grot Yoga, and successfully helped bring home eight stars to the camp, by meditating in yoga poses while being covered in rotten fruit and slime.

Earlier Boy George upset Hollyoaks star Owen Warner at breakfast when he admitted to eating two bananas, after Coronation Street actor Sue Cleaver had left the camp.

Warner fumed: “So last night the bananas we got for dessert we saved for breakfast this morning. There was 9. There’s one short. George confesses, he’s had Sue’s banana. Don’t steal food from me!”

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Boy George laughed as he sang: “‘Oh yes, I had two bananas, two bananas today…’”

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