For artists of my caliber, we're not played on the radio, so we don't really get a chance to get involved in that debate at all. We don't get a chance, because this weird kind of ageism exists in pop music. If you're past a certain age, you're not relevant. That's the kind of cliched term.

I went back to DJ'ing in 1987, and it's been an incredible second career for me. Plus, it's almost a parallel universe. If you don't go to underground clubs, you wouldn't know what I do or who I am. So there's been a whole new audience of people that don't even know I'm that 'Boy George', the one their mother used to like.

The ultimate goal is to be more satisfied. I really don't believe you get wiser because you get older. It's a choice, perhaps not to take some things so seriously.

School is not a great place to have feminine features or a big nose, or to wear glasses or the wrong shoes.

At the age of six, I declared that I wanted to be an astronaut. My mother thought that was just fine, as it would encourage me to learn science, and besides, there really was no chance I would ever actually become an astronaut.

In my own life, my science and my religion are separate.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it.