The visit coincides with Blackpool's Gay Pride weekend.

"Little did we know when we booked George some four months ago that it would fall on the day of Blackpool's Gay Pride weekend so it's a great coincidence that we have probably one of the biggest gay icons ever," says Syndicate resident DJ Jason Fubar.

Although he sprang to fame as the frontman of Culture Club, Boy George started DJ'ing three years before his band's first chart success.

"I first started spinning records back in 1979 alongside Jeremy Healy, the most hardworking and well travelled DJ I know," he says. "We met on a bus in Lewisham.

"I was a blonde spiky haired punk on my way to a loveless job in a printing firm. I was propped against the bus window, half-asleep, when I noticed an urchin like schoolboy in a posh school uniform, except for a large and very bright pair of 'teddy boy' creepers clomping off the bus.

"Over the coming weeks, Jeremy and I kept bumping into each other at train stations, charity shops and punk gigs and we became friends."
They shared "a madness" for buying records and when mutual friend Phillip Salon opened his New Romantic club Planets, they were roped in as DJs.

"Phillip knew that we would enjoy being up in the DJ box in full display and we were cheap too.

"The music was an eclectic, neurotic blend of current dance pop, vintage reggae, spitting punk anthems and we even played cuts from The Sound of Music.

"At first, this was simply to get rid of the punters at closing time but we started getting requests for The Lonely Goatherd and Climb Every Mountain. Phillip would lead a quasi-foxtrot or waltz and the crowd would refuse to leave. It was mega camp."

After Culture Club came and went he returned to DJ'ing.

"My manager was absolutely horrified that I was DJ'ing for £300 a night in dingy clubs and thought it would destroy my reputation.

"But I had reached a very realistic point in terms of how I looked at my career. The fact is, I didn't have one. Radio in the UK and all over the world were happy to play Karma Chameleon but that was it and I had no desire to be held in the past."

Not everyone took kindly to the change of role.

"The best advice I ever got was from Jon Pleased.

"I was playing in Manchester and I did a right clanger. John said, 'at least they know you're here'. I think some DJs take it too seriously, it's only playing records."