Boy George had viewers in tears as he told of how his father used to punch and hit him when he was younger.
Speaking in an intimate interview with Piers Morgan, the well-loved pop star opened up about various aspects of his life, including the time he shackled a sex worker to a wall and beat him.
But it was when it came to talking about his relationship with his Irish father Gerry O’Dowd, that viewers were moved and took to Twitter to applaud his honesty and bravery.
During the chat, the Culture Club singer opened up about how his ‘loving’ relationship with his late father had been complicated by violent outbursts.
“My dad was quite an extreme man,” he said. “[He] could lose his temper and chuck the entire Sunday dinner over and everybody went hungry.”
“He hit us all the time, punched us, but everyone in the 70s punched you. It happened a lot.”
George, getting emotional, went on to explain that his fiery father would “fly off the handle quite easily” despite being “extremely charismatic and funny”.
“He was a real contradiction,” he explained. “and it wasn’t until I got to about 15 or 16 that I realised how strong my mum was.”
Viewers were fast to reach out and pay tribute to the star for his brutal honesty on the show.
@BoyGeorge amazing interview .!! Upmost respect for how honest u was #boygeorge
— Dan Noakes (@lilnoakes89) February 17, 2017
https://twitter.com/Ashleighw13/status/832711294729850881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
That was a really moving interview #LifeStories #BoyGeorge
— Nadine (@xDinaJanex) February 17, 2017
Other viewers were inspired to share their own reminiscences.
@BoyGeorge childhood sounds just the same as mine only our dad didn't hit us ….he terrified us
— jules (@jules0455) February 17, 2017
This isn’t the first time George has spoken about living with his abusive father.
Back in 2007, his mum Dinah published a book called Cry Salty Tears in which she discussed the volatile relationship she endured with George’s father.
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In the book Dinah told how she had fled the house on a number of occasions after he had laid in other. She even spoke about a time when her husband held a knife to her face and threatened to cut her if she said another word.
“I thought he’d kill me and my kids – I believed him and I gave up my identity then,” she said in an interview at the time of the book’s publication. “That night I decided I wasn’t going to talk to anybody where the situation could be misconstrued, I wasn’t going to wear make-up or dress in any way that would make him feel threatened.
“I wore a scarf for about ten years like a bandanna around my head. I reached 50 and still had to ask permission to go to the pictures. You come to believe that that’s how men are and you come to accept it.
“As the years went by, I learned to be ten yards ahead of him. I knew what he was going to say and what he was going to do, and in that way I knew how to protect myself and survive.”
George wrote a foreword for the book and praised his mother’s strength.
“As a bratty teenager, I am ashamed to say that I started to think of Mum as weak because I couldn’t understand why she stayed in such a destructive marriage,” he wrote.
“Once I grew up a bit, I realised that Mum had stuck out the marriage for her kids and because she truly loved my father and believed in the sanctity of marriage.”