Boy George is feeling remorse over a “not very nice” comment he made about Liam Payne before the One Direction star’s death.
“In the case of Liam Payne, I watched him a few days before it happened … I remember watching online, and I’d actually put a message under a post saying, ‘He’s off his nut,’ which wasn’t very nice but I felt it. I felt like he was out of control,” George, 63, said on the Thursday, November 21, episode of the “High Performance” podcast hosted by Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes.
“And when it happened, it just hit me,” he continued, referring to Payne’s death after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires on October 16. “The same way that Amy Winehouse hit me. Because it felt so senseless.”
“I was up at 5 in the morning and it came up on the American news and I was literally like, ‘What the f—?’” the former Culture Club frontman said. “I was literally like, ‘No, this isn’t real.’ I couldn’t take it in. I think everybody felt like that.”
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The “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” singer said that watching news coverage of Payne’s dad, Geoff, in Argentina in the aftermath of his death was emotional. Geoff traveled to Buenos Aires last month to support Argentine police in their investigation into the singer’s death and to repatriate Payne’s body back to his native U.K.
“Somebody tweeted to me: ‘You only care because he’s good-looking.’ I think, ‘F— off. You’re an idiot,’” George said. “I care about his family … I watched the dad. Heartbreaking. I was quite tearful about it. I really felt very sad.”
Payne was laid to rest in a private funeral ceremony in Amersham, England, on Wednesday, November 20. His former One Direction bandmates, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, all attended, marking the first time the four surviving band members have been together since Malik left the group in 2015.
Payne’s girlfriend Kate Cassidy was also spotted at the funeral, as was his ex-girlfriend, Cheryl Cole, with whom Payne shared a 7-year-old son, Bear.
Other names who attended the funeral included Simon Cowell, James Corden and Cole’s Girls Aloud bandmates Kimberley Walsh and Nicola Roberts.
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Earlier in November, Buenos Aires prosecutors charged three people in connection with Payne’s death. Brian Nahuel Paiz and two other individuals were charged with abandonment leading to death and the supply and facilitation of narcotics.
Paiz recently told Us Weekly he will cooperate fully with the police investigation into Payne’s death.
“I want to contribute everything: my phone, everything to the investigation,” Paiz exclusively told Us. “I have nothing that can harm me. … The other thing is to contribute what I saw personally and what I experienced firsthand.”
