Sathnam Sanghera

And that was simply because it was almost impossible to be out and in the public eye in the 80s.

The press was so hostile.

And so, I mean, there were some brave people who came out like Erasure and, you know, Holly Johnson and so on, but almost no one was out.

And that's because we made it very, very hard for anyone who did come out.

Yeah, I mean, I was shocked at some of the press coverage of when he did come out in the late 90s, that, you know,

Almost several of the papers equated him being outed, being caught in the toilet, you know, masturbating, to Gary Glitter, who'd just been done for some child porn offence.

It's like, seriously?

And that's how bad it was, you know, even in the late 90s.

Even Will Young in the early noughties was saying it was hard to be gay in the apartment years.

But if we don't now give...

gay people a hard time if they're in the entertainment business is because partly of George.

I think he punctured the purience of the tabloid newspapers and they never really outed anyone in the same way again, you know?

When Stephen Gailey came out, I think not long after George was outed, he was embraced by his fans and by the press.

So I think something changed.

Oh, there's so many things, and some of them I was surprised by when I discovered them.

I guess the first Western band to play in China.

Yep.

Also his activism on a bunch of subjects.

Apartheid, he broke up Wham!

because of apartheid, because his management company had got involved with the South African regime.