The Pop Corporation

When the tabloids went after George Michael, it was an appalling act of pettiness and spitefulness that saw him outed, not that his legions of fans cared about who he was fucking. So, it was a coup de grâce for George to tackle the whole thing head-on with his next single, ‘Outside’, where he gave us one of the greatest serves of all time, singing:

I think I’m done with the sofa
I think I’m done with the hall
I think I’m done with the kitchen table, baby

Let’s go outside (let’s go outside)
In the sunshine
I know you want to, but you can’t say yes

What the tabloids called ‘a lewd act’, Gorgeous George turned it into a celebration of sex that was dancefloor ready and godammit, so witty and smart, that it cemented his place as a legend of popular music. The Sun said ‘ZIP ME UP BEFORE YOU GO GO’, tittering behind their typewriters, leading George to disparage the whole thing, bored of the sofa, and taking it into the fresh air. It was brilliant. It was cheeky. It was a masterstroke.

To sing “I’d service the community, but I already have, you see”, is one of the finest ripostes in music history, and it could have been so much cheekier.

You see, the music video director for the video has stated that George wanted to go much, much further. The video we all saw for the song was cheeky enough, but it turns out he wanted to make a full, hardcore version of the track.

Vaughan Arnell, said: “He wanted to develop it more to make a secondary video, which would be a more hardcore porn version of it.” With a lot of the video shot from the air, Arnell says that, seeing as they were shooting people getting frisky in public, it had to be done “somewhere where people couldn’t see you doing it”.

“Some of it was full penetration that we were doing as well so that was full on for a controlled town,” Arnell added. “The idea was to actually expand the video and make a porn movie of it as well but it never finally got made, I think it got canned.”

There was a number of pretty edgy videos around that time, so we can only imagine what could have been. It would’ve been great wouldn’t it? Our George, whipping up the stiffs and infuriating the tabloid editors – oh, that would have been magic!

Well, remind yourself of the video that did get made, brilliant as it is, but imagine it with some ‘bonus’ footage.