Troubled personal life of pop superstar George Michael

George Michael enjoyed a remarkable chart career, selling more than 100 million records - but he also had a turbulent personal life. 

He tallied seven number one singles in the UK, but as the years went by difficulties with addiction and scrapes with the law increasingly made more impact than his musical output.

Michael - born Georgios Panayiotou in north London - found fame as a teenager in the early 1980s after forming Wham! with school friend Andrew Ridgeley.

:: George Michael dies of suspected heart failure aged 53

The pair dominated the charts with hits including Last Christmas, Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Young Guns (Go For It).

In 1985 they made history by becoming the first Western pop act to perform in China.

But they pulled the plug on their partnership while still at the top, ending with triumphant Wembley shows in 1986.

Michael went on to enjoy a massively successful solo career and his album Faith was a huge international success following its release in 1987.

There were collaborations with the likes of Aretha Franklin and Sir Elton John - while one of the high points of his career came with a display of remarkable vocal range when singing Somebody to Love during a Freddie Mercury tribute concert at Wembley.

But lengthy legal battles followed as he tried to free himself from a deal with record label Sony.

Then there was his sexuality. Michael had always refused to be drawn on speculation that he was gay and so suffered privately when his partner Anselmo Feleppa died of AIDS. Some time later his mother passed.

He later reflected: "I had my very first relationship at 27 because I really had not actually come to terms with my sexuality until I was 24.

"I lost my partner to HIV then it took about three years to grieve; then after that I lost my mother. I felt almost like I was cursed."

Michael was forced to disclose his homosexuality - and his relationship with American Kenny Goss - in 1998 when he was arrested in public toilets in Beverly Hills, California, for engaging in a lewd act. The incident had been a sting involving an undercover cop.

He parodied the episode in the video of 1998 single Outside, which reached number two.

Liberated by his outing, Michael immediately fronted a documentary about HIV to coincide with World AIDS Day - and his campaigning would earn praise from the LGBT community upon news of his death.

Musically, however, his career would never again scale the heights of the 1980s and 1990s.

His satirical take on the relationship between Tony Blair and George Bush, Shoot The Dog, saw him branded a "washed-up pop pervert" by a US newspaper following its release in 2002.

His last appearance in the top 10 was in 2004. 

Another run-in with the law came in October 2006 when he was found slumped over the wheel of his car.

The following summer he pleaded guilty to driving while unfit through drugs and was banned from driving for two years.

In 2008 Michael was once again in the spotlight when he was cautioned for possession of class A drugs.

The singer entered a period of semi-retirement in 2008, quitting live performances and seeking a "quieter life" out of the public eye.

But in September 2010 Michael received an eight-week prison sentence for crashing his Range Rover into a Snappy Snaps shop in north London.

He was given a five-year driving ban after pleading guilty to driving under the influence of drugs and possessing cannabis.

In 2011 he officially announced the end of his relationship with Goss - though it transpired they had split two years earlier.

While he made headlines for the right and wrong reasons, what was rarely written about in the papers was his philanthropy.

Childline founder Dame Esther Rantzen said he had given "millions" and "no one outside the charity knew how much he had given the nation's most vulnerable children".

Michael also retained the self-deprecating trait the world had seen in the video of Outside, appearing in the first of James Corden's Carpool Karaoke features for Comic Relief in 2011. There was also a cameo in Ricky Gervais' Extras in which he was filmed on a park bench enquiring about "action".

Michael was working on a new album before his death, and a documentary called Freedom was due to be released in March.

Read more
George Michael dies of suspected heart failure at 53
Wham! bandmate Andrew Ridgeley 'heartbroken'
Celebrity deaths in 2016