George Michael talks cars, drugs and gay marriage

Illustrated rainbow pride flag on a white background.

George Michael has revealed plans to have a civil partnership and jokingly blamed his recent troubles on Sir Elton John, in an interview with Michael Parkinson to be broadcast this weekend.

The gay star, who has been branded a “stoned waster” by friends after a drugs caution, and was questioned by police this week over crashing into three cars, described himself as a “terrible driver” and “vulnerable to the press.”

Michael confirmed on the show that he and his partner, Kenny Goss, would have a civil ceremony, “I think that we will formalise it definitely from a legal point of view.

“It’s absolutely essential that we have the same safeguards that straight couples do. But I want more than a 50% chance of success. I don’t want to emulate that.

“We’ll probably do it on our 10th anniversary. We’ll probably do the formal legal thing then the party.

“But no-one is going to be getting into a dress. Neither of us have the body for it now.”

He recounted his version of the Easter Sunday crash incident to Parkinson, “”I got into my parked car, which was on a very steep hill I have to add, took the handbrake off, tried to manoeuvre out and hit the car in front of me.

“I didn’t know that it hit the car in front of it, and hit the car in front of that.”

But the singer rejected reports that he drove off without telling anybody.

Michael added, “Nobody wants to shunt another car or be found asleep behind the wheel. But they’re not life-changing events.

Unfortunately every artist nowadays has a soap opera and it’s decided where they’re going to be in that, the trajectory of my particular soap opera launched from that statement Elton made about 18 months ago when he hadn’t seen me for years.

“For some reason, from that point on, I’ve been trying to prove that I’m not really miserable. That unfortunately made me really vulnerable to the press.”

On the subject of his cannabis caution, he asked: “”Are we really going to say that was dramatic?”

Meanwhile, George Michael has announced his first international tour for 15 years from this September.

Parkinson is on ITV1 at 10.15pm on Saturday.