Sarfraz Manzoor

Pete Burns is running late. I wait in the lobby of a Covent Garden hotel and try not to notice a tall heavily made up man dressed in what looks like a knitted version of a technicolour dreamcoat and with lips that resemble a Salvador Dali sofa as he drifts past arm in arm with a formidably bleached male companion. My mobile rings. It is a harassed publicist. ‘If you see Pete please don’t approach or talk to him’ he says in a voice that is both threatening and desperate. What, I wonder, might happen were I sail up to Burns? Would he explode in rage unleashing a torrent of abuse like that meted out to the Baywatch actress Traci Bingham in last year’s Celebrity Big Brother? Burns’ verbal demolition of the unnaturally perky Bingham which included calling her a ‘bitch and an LA whore’ led to him being accused by one viewer of being ‘a nasty, bullying, bitter, twisted, fucked up freak.’ I tell the publicist I will wait to be introduced.

Twenty minutes later I am ushered in to meet Pete Burns. With his almond shaped eyes, smooth complexion and streaky black hair he could be the lead in an all-male Merseyside version of ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’. Alongside the knitted dreamcoat he is sporting tartan trousers, a black waistcoat with red tie, red frilly socks under laced up boots and an industrial quantity of maroon lipstick. Sitting with him is new husband Michael Simpson whom Burns married in July after a twenty year marriage to Lynn Corbett. She was his hairdresser and he was lead singer of electro outfit Dead or Alive. His first flush with success came with the band’s 1985 number one hit ‘You Spin me round’; more recently his career has relied on a ghoulish fascination with his somewhat unconventional looks. Four nose jobs, cheek implants, lip augmentation and more than one hundred reconstructive operations to try and correct a botched lip implant have had the cumulative effect of leaving Burns as living confirmation of John Updike’s observation that fame is the mask which eats into the face. These days Burns’ fame derives from a face that resembles a mask but while his recent celebrity has been gained from reality television Burns himself claims neither to watch or understand its appeal. ‘I think these days anybody can be famous’ he declares ‘it’s an easy thing to achieve, you don’t have to have done anything to get famous.’ Burns may not understand the appeal of reality television but he is canny enough to be able to exploit it. In his forthcoming series for Living TV ‘Pete’s PA’ contestants are promised, or threatened, with the opportunity to be his personal assistant. In the series- think Big Brother meets The Apprentice and then dramatically lower your expectations- Pete Burns is the boss from hell, one part Sir Alan to two parts Lily Savage, overseeing the ten contestants who had been selected from more 500 applicants. ‘There was a certain amount of the contestants whose life’s ambition was just to get on television’ he admits ‘people who were completely unqualified to do anything other than stay in a mental institution.’ Pete Burns evidently doesn’t do self-awareness and it didn’t seem polite to remind him of his visit to a mental health centre last year. When reminded of the task in ‘Pete’s PA’ where contestants are ordered to leap into a skip and pick through rotting food in search for his favourite shade of lipstick Burns suggests that ‘there are lots of people who would shovel shit and eat it to be famous.’  Is he worried that these days he is only famous for being famous? ‘I don’t give a fuck what people think I’m famous for’ he says testily. In that case, I wondered, what would he say he actually did? For once, Burns appears lost for words.  ‘I’m quite ill-prepared for that question’ he says finally. I ask the question again. ‘I can’t really go there’ he says ‘its just not something I have ever had to address.’ But if you meet someone who doesn’t know you what do you say you do exactly? There is a tense silence as I wonder if the interview is about to be reach an abrupt conclusion. ‘They would need to have lived on Jupiter’ he says. What would be his answer? ‘I don’t often come up against people who don’t know what I do’ he repeats before finally suggesting that what he actually does is ‘I’m just Pete.’

Burns’ caustic personality is seen by his fans as heroic and quintessentially British in its wilful awkwardness; others are less forgiving dismissing him as a chronically insecure and self-absorbed bully. His appearance in last year’s Celebrity Big Brother where he appeared to delight in bullying the female housemates was particularly controversial. Does he accept that the series revealed him to be a nasty bully? ‘I didn’t feel any desire to endear myself to any of the other people in the show’ he declares unapologetically ‘and if I came across as dark and nasty well a lot of people liked that because I spoke my mind.’ Burns had consistently turned down requests to appear on reality television claiming ‘I have a career, I don’t do reality.’ Now he admits he accepted Celebrity Big Brother because ‘they offered me a fucking big bag of money and I’m suing a cosmetic surgery.’ Burns is reluctant to speak more about the lawsuit and his mood sours further when I ask him to confirm a rumour that he was refusing to be photographed because he was having a ‘bad lip day’. ‘That’s a pile of crap’ he snaps angrily ‘that gets right up the crack of my arse. I will not have what happened to me trivialised by your rag. He (Dr Maurizio Viel)  injected something into my lips that almost killed me.  I went into kidney failure I could have had facial amputation.  I underwent 17 months of intense reconstructive surgery in Italy by a cancer facial specialist- that’s how serious it was. It would have been easier to reconstruct me had I gone through a windscreen.’ Burns is suing Dr Veil for an estimated one million dollars claiming that were it not for his botched operation he would have stood to return to a successful music career. Despite his horrific lip implant experience 48 year old Burns is not sorry he ever embarked on cosmetic surgery. ‘I have absolutely no regrets’ he says firmly. But what was the appeal in altering his appearance so dramatically? ‘Creativity’ he explains ‘nobody is fundamentally happy with the way they look. Eventually the human race will evolve into something that is quite surreal and I think I was just ahead of my time. I’m very happy with the consequences of what I have done.’

One of the most frustrating consequences of his surgical adventures is combating public perceptions. Where other celebrities can don sunglasses and a hat and melt into anonymity it is less easy for Pete Burns to melt into a crowd. When out in public he rarely makes eye contact with strangers and admits to having faced hostility when out on the street. He doesn’t read newspapers or watch television; when asked about Keira Knightley’s recent comments on celebrity culture he admitted to not knowing who she was and he confused Russell Brand with Russell Grant. ‘‘People take one look at me and think I must lead a debauched crazy life and it’s so not like that’ he says ‘I picked up two bags of laundry from a service wash the other day. People probably think I don’t do things like that. I just want the most quiet life I can possibly have’. The desire not to have a large audience watching him may perhaps explain why his latest series is on Living TV but it is nevertheless a curious contradiction- the man who craves quiet domesticity but whose career rests on looking freakish, someone who is interesting simply because they look strange. He would make a fascinating subject for analysis but the man himself is not interested in introspective reflection. ‘I’m nearly fifty and I am not about to start analysing myself’ he says ‘because it’s a bit like being on a tightrope and looking at the floor- you’ll fall- and I will never look at the floor, I will just keep going and being who I am and doing what I am doing.’