| Photo: National Post |
| Wake Me Up Before You Go Go: George Michael’s a free man again after being discovered slumped over the wheel of his car and serving half of an eight-week prison sentence for DUI and cannabis. |
Singer George Michael has been released from prison in the U.K., after serving four weeks of an eight-week sentence for DUI and possession of marijuana.
The 47-year-old pop star, freed after serving half of his sentence, told reporters he “just wants to start again” and that it was “fantastic” to be free on “a beautiful day,” reports BBC News.
“I just want to way thank you for everybody who has supported me in there,” the singer told reporters outside his home in north London.
Michael was arrested in July after being found slumped at the wheel of his Land Rover in Hampstead, north London, after a Gay Pride parade on July 4.
| Photo: StarTrip |
The singer, whose real name is Georgios Panayiotou, served the first part of his sentence in Pentonville Prison before being transferred to Highpoint Prison (appropriate name!), in Suffolk.
Michael issued a statement while serving his time that he had received “no special treatment of any kind,” and that guards and his fellow inmates had treated him kindly and did not bully him.
In addition to the prison time, Michael was also fined about $1,944 and banned from driving for five years.
He had a previous conviction for a similar offense after police twice found him slumped over the wheel and passed out in his car on public roads in 2006, reports Corinne Heller at OnTheRedCarpet.com.
Michael said at the time that he was once addicted to prescription drugs and that he smokes cannabis regularly, saying that it “keeps me sane and happy.”
Michael called cannabis “very good for creative people.”
“There’s not another drug in my life that I’m glad I took, but grass,” Michael said in 2006.
| Photo: London Evening Standard |
| Michael fires up a doob on TV in 2006 |
He was banned from driving for two years in 2007 and sentenced to 100 hours of community service after admitting to “driving while unfit,” due to the influence of drugs, after he crashed into three parked cars and drove off without notifying the owners.
Then in 2008, Michael was arrested in a public bathroom for possession of drugs, thought to include crack cocaine, and given a warning. His most infamous arrest had happened in 1998, when he was detained outside a public bathroom in Beverly Hills, California and charged with “engaging in a lewd act.” He pleaded no contest and got 80 hours of community service.
According to the AP, Michael was “questioned by police after his car hit a tractor-trailer” in 2009, but was released without charges.
| Photo: BigPicturesPhoto.com |
| Michael tokes up on a cruise in March 2010 |
He was once again photographed smoking a joint in March of this year while on a boat cruise, reports the London Daily Mail.
The singer admitted in an interview last year to smoking up to 25 joints a day, but said he had now cut back to only seven or eight a day.
This time, he was told there was no option other than a jail sentence when he appeared at Highbury Magistrates Court last month.
CCTV footage showed the singer’s car going over the curb and crashing into a store after a local Gay Pride parade.
After Michael’s arrest, drug test results showed he had taken a “therapeutic quantity” of an antidepressant, along with some gamma-hydroxybutyrate, known as a “date-rape drug” because it leaves people groggy and powerless to resist (and, as most any pothead knows, that must have been the real reason he crashed his vehicle).
Michael’s attorney had told the court before his sentencing that the singer was trying to “get his life back on track.”
“For the first time in many years he has started writing again,” Michael’s attorney said. “His creativity, so long hampered by his drug dependence, is re-emerging,” the lawyer claimed.
Following his release Monday, Michael came outside his home to promise reporters he was “going to try to stop running away from you guys.”
“I’m coming out here on my own so that you’ll realize I just want to start again,” Michael said, adding the reporters would “see him about.”
“By the way, I’ve just thought of a really good idea for a song,” the singer said. “It’s going to be nothing to do with prison.”