The bizarre moment Boy George was nearly killed by a giant disco ball
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Credit: Adam Hurley
Sometimes, world history hinges on a man escaping certain death by the skin of his ear. That will certainly be one of the main takeaways from 2024, but it’s not an entirely new concept. In fact, we’re approaching the 25th anniversary of the fateful day, on December 14th, 1999, when another reality TV star narrowly avoided his demise in arguably even more spectacular fashion. It might not have changed world history, exactly, but if Boy George had been crushed and killed by the 28-kilogram disco ball that fell on him that day, you certainly wouldn’t need to be reminded about it.
The incident went down at the Bournemouth International Centre in Dorset. Boy George, by now a fully grown man of 38, was already riding the reunion tour train, as a re-assembled Culture Club had teamed up with a few other still-young ‘80s nostalgia acts—Belinda Carlisle, Heaven 17, and Bananarama—for a Christmastime jaunt around some mid-size UK venues. As one would assume, the stage decorations for Culture Club’s set were decidedly anti-minimalist, as a trio of giant, 4-foot wide glitter balls were hung from the ceiling above the stage each night.
On this occasion, though, while George and his bandmates were running through a pre-show rehearsal, one of those absurdly massive, precariously positioned spheroids snapped loose from its cable and dropped at terminal velocity, side-swiping George on the way down before smashing into a thousand glittering shards. He was “lucky” not to be smushed into a pancake, to be sure, but our hero wasn’t totally unscathed.
“It would have been both ironic and glamorous to be finished off by a four-foot glitter ball,” George told the Sun afterward. “But I have survived and I’m still here, although my back is aching like anything. It caught my ear, which is really sore as well.”
Despite the brush with death, George and Culture Club carried on and played their set that night. One headline the next day read, “Giant disco ball tumbles for Boy George,” a fine punny reference to Culture Club’s hit song ‘I’ll Tumble 4 Ya.’ Somebody almost matched that effort over on the Morrissey fan club website Morrisseysolo, titling their version of the story, “Near Death of a Disco Dancer.”
Boy George was a survivor of what could have been arguably the world’s single most catastrophic disco ball attack. But, then again, survival was already a big part of his brand. Just a few days before the Bournemouth ball dodge, George had spoken with the Guardian about the second wave of success he’d been enjoying after some tough times following Culture Club’s original split. “I don’t think of it as reinvention,” he said. “I see it as getting on with your life. Reinvention is a press term. It’s more of a survival technique for me.”
As for how Boy George’s non-death affected the next quarter-century that followed? Well, it’s been a mixed bag.
After years of notoriously combative relations with both the media and other entertainers, the disco ball scare seemed to have, perhaps (probably not), given George a moment to pause and reflect on what really matters.
Within a few years, he’d earn himself a Tony Award nomination (for the score to the play Taboo), write a second autobiography, and gradually establish himself as a beloved national treasure of sorts, eventually popping up on popular reality shows like The Voice and I’m a Celebrity…. On the negative side, he also had several more run-ins with the law, had a total and final (probably) falling out with Culture Club, and appeared on the show I’m a Celebrity….
Still, in a world that’s already lost far too many of its beloved ‘80s icons—Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, Morrissey—we can be grateful that George Alan O’Dowd still walks among us, too much of a survivor to let a giant falling glitter ball spell his end.
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