George Michael and his Swollen Epiphany

So, George Michael takes the Olympic opening ceremony as his opportunity to wallow in egotistical shite bath to remind us all how ill he was last year. I can’t really describe how annoyed this made me, but by jingo, I’m going to have a go.

George, there is a time and a place. The fact you have seen fit to make your new single a self-confessed ode to your near death experience is surely enough reference to what should really be a private matter. This whole tawdry spectacle offends me for the simple reason that I think he’s making far too much out of it. And before you call me a heartless bastard who should just allow his tracheotomy scar its little moment in the sun, let me explain.

I have a personal axe to grind here. Barely a month after George left his enforced stay with the intensive care nurses to confront the world’s media on the lawn of his Hampstead home, I found myself facing exactly the same predicament. A very nasty case of double pneumonia resulted in a hospital stay of three weeks, including two in intensive care where I languished in a medically induced coma as my body fought off various complications. Eventually I got better, but not before my family went through hell wondering if I was going to pull through and I had spent weeks lying in bed waiting for my strength to come back.

George seems to labour under the misapprehension that he had some kind of life changing experience that we are privileged to share with him via the medium of his tedious dance-pop. He claims there is some kind of mythical “white light” waiting for us as we ascend to the spirit world. Of course, George isn’t claiming to have got religion: he’s got the pop star’s next best thing, the uselessly vague term “spirituality”.  Excuse me, Mr Michael, but what exactly does that mean? Spirit of what? The only spirit I remember from hospital is possibly the white spirit they used to swab my catheter. I mean, get Catholicism or something: at least it’s a creed.

Why pop stars insist of assigning some kind of spurious significance to any major health scare, as if every bump in the road was a readymade epiphany waiting for the juggernaut of their massive ego to thunder over it in a blaze of self-regarding publicity, utterly eludes me. I can confidently assure anyone who is interested that there is no white light waiting at the gates of paradise or elsewhere. All I remember is confusion, nightmares, hallucinations, a feeling of being choked and an endless beeping sound from the various machines I was hooked into to keep me alive.

Maybe I’m just not as “spiritual” as George. Maybe only those so preternaturally gifted as the former shuttlecock stuffing pop star can truly appreciate the significance of death brushing past you in the corridor like a cold draft from an open door.  All I know is I am thankful to the doctors and nurses who kept me alive and brought me back to my family, who let me hold my wife and my son again, who gave me a chance to keep on acting out this random pantomime. Did they get me closer to my spirituality? Frankly, no.

George, make a donation to your local ICU, file it under “lucky escapes”, then get back to what you do best: singing songs about shagging strangers in public toilets. And cut down on the spliffs, as they aren’t good for your fragile lungs.  Anything else is just crass grandstanding and you should keep it to yourself. 

Anyway, here's his fucking video...

White Light