How George Michael took control of his story after being outed by the tabloids

Old tabloid hacks never do themselves any favours, do they? Here they were in Outed, Channel 4’s two-part documentary about George Michael being arrested for a lewd act in a Beverly Hills public toilet in 1998, reminiscing about the glory days.

The founder of LA agency Splash News proudly shared its motto: “Your misfortune is our fortune.” Former executives of The Sun and News of the World bragged about their exploits, which included trying to expose the fact that Anselmo Feleppa, Michael’s partner, had died from Aids – a job which involved doorstepping both his doctor and his grieving mother. You could feel the adrenaline rising again in an ex-paparazzo as he recalled seeing Michael cruising in an LA park: “Get the f---ing shot! Get the f---ing shot!”

“Zip Me Up Before You Go Go,” said the front page of The Sun, the day after Michael’s arrest. “That’s a great headline,” said Neil Wallis, the paper’s former deputy editor. Now, let’s not get too prissy about this. It is a good headline. Nobody does them better than The Sun.

It’s also undeniable that Michael outed himself with a pretty reckless act in a public place, after years of denying his sexuality for professional and personal reasons. Simon Napier-Bell, Michael’s manager, acknowledged here that the star was marketed to teenage girls in his Wham! days, and that subsequently coming out as gay when the world was gripped by panic about Aids would have been “devastating” for his career. Michael worried about what his parents would think, and he also wanted to retain what privacy he could as one of the biggest pop stars in the world.

Outed functions well as a study of this period in history: how being gay was perceived in the 1980s and 1990s, and how the press behaved. Wallis said that the tabloids were simply “reflecting the moral panic that was out there”.

The film also shows how Michael took control of the story, refusing to skulk away in shame. He spoke about it in interviews and famously dressed as an LAPD cop in the video for his single Outside, which also featured some snazzy urinals. Friends and family, including former partner Kenny Goss and friend Andros Georgiou, gave us the inside story, speaking with love and admiration. The programme was another reminder, if any were needed, that George Michael was great.

But the film doesn’t ask those hacks to reflect on the episode, and it doesn’t look at how times have changed other than to note in the closing minutes that Rebel Wilson was outed last year by an Australian gossip column. A little more analysis would lift it beyond a historical document.