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Community service

New York: The sanitation department of Manhattan's lower east side will never have a cleaner car park. A stocky, shaven-headed figure in a high-visibility orange vest spent much of Monday sweeping up dust, leaves and litter in the yard of the scruffy municipal rubbish depot. He was good at it. But then Boy George had an audience; his every stroke was being watched and commented upon by a crowd of reporters, passers by, and a handful of very faithful fans. Wielding a broom and a bin, the 1980s pop star was tasting punishment for wasting police time. The judge deemed sweeping the streets a suitable ``exercise in humiliation or in humility''. Boy George is serving penance for an incident in 2004 in which he summoned police to his New York apartment to report a break-in. Officers found no sign of an intruder but they did stumble upon 13 bags of cocaine. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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