Biographie

His partner Anselmo Feleppa, whom he met in 1991, died from an AIDS-related brain haemorrhage in 1993.

After he died, many stories quickly came forward about his generous nature. It was revealed that he had donated to charities such as Childline, The Terrence Higgins Trust for HIV victims and Macmillan Cancer Support as well as being the greatest benefactor for Project Angel Food. His only condition for many of these contributions was that his identity not be revealed. He also often volunteered at homeless shelters. It was revealed that he often gave money freely to strangers who were in trouble, such as a student nurse working in a bar to whom he gave a five thousand pound tip, giving twenty-five thousand pounds to a woman he heard crying over debt in a cafe, asking the waitress to hand it over once he had left and anonymously sending fifteen thousand to a woman on the game show Deal or No Deal? (2005) who needed the money for IVF treatment. Every Christmas, he would donate one-hundred thousand pounds to Capital FM's charity drive. He donated the royalties from his 1996 UK number-one "Jesus to a Child" to Childline and the royalties from another number-one, the Elton John duet "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me", to an AIDS hospice.

He wrote, produced and performed the classic song "Last Christmas" when he was just 21 years old. There have been over 395 cover versions of the song by different artists since it was released in 1984.

He wrote his smash hit single "Careless Whisper" when he was just 17, on a Thursday afternoon in Bushey. He waited until he was 21 before he released it as his first solo single. The song reached number one in more than 25 countries and sold in excess of six million copies.

He recorded duets with Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Rory Bourke, Mary J. Blige and Whitney Houston.

I do think that Live Aid (1985) was a great thing, it focused people, I think it showed young kids the way in many respects and I think a lot of people are still inspired by what happened in the mid-Eighties.

I still believe that music is one of the greatest gifts that God gave to man.

Even though it's become a really cliched thing to see musicians working for charity, it's still effective and it still has to be done.

It was my own stupid fault. I was in possession of class C drugs which is an offence and I have no complaints about the police, who were professional throughout.

[April 2006] The trajectory of my particular soap opera with the press launched from that statement Elton [Elton John] made about eighteen months ago when Elton hadn't seen me for years. Elton said he thought I was really miserable for some reason. From that point on I've been trying to prove that I'm not. Unfortunately it made me incredibly vulnerable to the press.