The latest scandal in the life of Boy George involves a charge of false imprisonment of a 28-year-old male escort who claims he was chained to a wall in the former singer's East London flat during a kinky photographic session.

The man says he was forced to flee wearing nothing but his underpants before he could call the police at 6.30am from a nearby shop. If George is found guilty, he will face a possible jail sentence.

While the story makes for titillating headlines, it also evoked for me sordid memories of the night I first realised that George's infamy had outlived his music, that our sweet Eighties yesterdays were turning sour.

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Boy on the brink: A friend of Boy George who shared the highs - and lows - of his Eighties heyday fears he's about to self-destruct

Twenty-one years ago - can it have been so long - I experienced one of those nights when the gear-change from sublime to ridiculous is so barely perceptible that one pinches oneself in the morning against the odds of it having occurred.

One minute I was sipping champagne at David Frost's Chelsea home on a balmy summer evening, where Sarah Ferguson whispered loudly about her forthcoming marriage to Prince Andrew; the next, I was tearing across town to the Maida Vale home of pop's most eccentric superstar, where I would witness perhaps the last spectacle I could have imagined.

Sensational revelations by Boy George's younger brother that the flamboyant singer was battling an £800-a-day heroin habit, and was refusing all offers of family help, had set in motion a media frenzy for which not even headline-loving George could have been prepared.

When I arrived at his £350,000 mews house, a swarm of paparazzi was already buzzing around outside his door.

I had spent many hours with George, having known him for five years, and as I approached he saw me and howled "Get in here!", dragging me inside and collapsing in a sweat-stained heap.

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Bad karma: Boy George with Lesley-Ann Jones in his gender-bending prime

"Look at me", he moaned. "I'm dying. It's true, I am an out-and-out junkie. I've got an eight-gram-a-day heroin habit. And maybe not too many weeks to live."

I was speechless as I wrote, at George's request, the exclusive interview which would make the front page of this newspaper.

"I'm the biggest junkie in the world," he wailed. "Everybody's laughing at me." Well, not many people were laughing, but they were fascinated all right at the walking car crash he had become.

Throughout the early Eighties, waspish, witty, bizarrely-attired, "Gender-Bender" George cut an incomparably androgynous dash, even in those frivolous days when everyone looked weird.

With a mouth like Mae West, the toilet humour of Joan Rivers and the fashion sense of a Madonna or Cher on acid, he was a shameless attention-seeker who would do practically anything for a laugh.

Who could forget the night we spent in the boot of a car on Hampstead Heath, on the run from George's club-host pal Philip Sallon, with whom he'd had an almighty row - George lay there quoting Eleanor Roosevelt and Bette Davis.

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Self destruct: Is Boy George in the depths of dispair following the latest scandal to rock his life?

What he did have was genuine musicianship, unique songwriting ability, charismatic performing talent, visual flair, the gift of the gab and a disarming, almost breathtaking cheek, which somehow put one in mind of Cassius Clay before Ali set in.

There was something irresistible about George, a fact which drew me to him after we met on the set of a television show I co-presented. We fell in with each other and started to hang out, while his band Culture Club surfed the wave of international success and watched the millions pile up in the bank.

Then came the 1984 Band Aid recording of Do They Know It's Christmas, featuring George's matchless solo, for which he had casually dropped in straight from a transatlantic plane.

But for all the laughs and adventures we'd shared before that day in July 1986, nothing could have prepared me for the George who answered the door.

In front of me was a shuffling, doddering mess - an addled Ozzy Osbourne long before Ozzy invented the look. With his plain clothes hanging from his frame - he must have lost four stone - he looked pathetically sallow and thin.

His face was bare of its trademark make-up, his hair lank and sparse. His sad eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow, the teeth discoloured. Heroin addict was about the size of it - by his appearance at least.

George didn't die, of course. The courts were compassionate to say the least, and he did seek help to overcome his addictions. But there were subsequent police raids, arrests, magistrates' hearings, adjournments, appeals, wild goose chases and general dramas.

A month after I saw him in that terrible state, the body of George's friend and co-songwriter Michael Rudetsky was found at George's home. He had overdosed on heroin. It was another disastrous low point.

Many people would argue that George never really recovered in terms of his career, and that during the Nineties and Noughties he has established himself as the ultimate pop has-been.

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Junkie: Boy George admits to being an 'out-and-out' junkie

Today, at 47, he ekes out a living selling outlandish outfits from a fashion shop on London's Shoreditch High Street.

Yet one thing has never waned, despite the fact that the only music he plays these days is that of other artists, no longer the superstar but merely the club DJ: his notoriety.

There is no doubt the public is still intrigued by him. He commanded the headlines for his 2001 Tonynominated musical Taboo, which enjoyed mildly successful runs in the West End and on Broadway and featured a reviled, doorstepping female hack suspiciously similar to me.

Two years ago, his bloated face was once again splashed across the papers after a bizarre incident at his New York City apartment.

The story which emerged was that he had falsely reported a burglary at his home, and when police arrived they found cocaine there. Having been detained at 3am, he vehemently denied the drug was his.

Whatever the truth of that bizarre day, the result was a very public humiliation: George was ordered to sweep the streets of Manhattan in a garish orange jacket after earning a Community Service Order for his offence.

Now, this week's story about charges of false imprisonment has once again cast George and his louche lifestyle into a harsh spotlight.

We know now that his legendary declaration of a preference for a nice cup of tea over sex was disingenuous - his predatory gay lifestyle having always been energetic to say the least.

Might it now prove to be the reason for yet another very public humiliation? A rent-boy scandal would be an indulgence too far for many observers. In fact, "serves him right if they put him away" is a sentiment heard from record company boardrooms and media bars to London's members-only clubs, as those in the know take stock of the fall-out.

So where does all that leave Boy George? He is already a fully paid-up member of rock 'n' roll's Hall of Infamy.

But what will be the cost of his years of debauchery and selfdestruction? Whether the price will be time spent at Her Majesty's Pleasure, or whether he'll go free to rage further against the dying of his light, we will know soon enough.

When he lit the blue touch paper all those years ago and awaited his flash of pop glory, perhaps he should have stood a little further back.

But, of course, that would not have been his style at all.