George Michael Secretly Raised Millions For Charity

Following the Christmas morning death of superstar George Michael, 53, many have revealed that the late singer donated millions of pounds anonymously throughout his life.

The Wham! Star was found dead Sunday morning in his home, and the cause of death was attributed to heart failure. His longtime manager Michael Lippman announced his death Monday morning, according to the New York Times.

His longtime boyfriend Fadi Fawaz tweeted Monday that he had found Michael’s body Christmas morning.

Following the announcement, however, came an unexpected outpouring of confessions of various secret donations Michael made throughout his life.

Television presenter Richard Osman tweeted that after a Deal or No Deal‘ contestant revealed she needed £15,000, Michael “secretly phoned the next day and gave her the £15k.”

Journalist Sali Hughes tweeted that a piece she had written several years ago about an anonymous celebrity leaving a student barmaid in debt a £5,000 tip was about George Michael.

Others revealed that Michael secretly volunteered at a homeless shelter, gave a woman crying in a cafe about her debt £25,000, and arranged an annual £100,000 donation to DJ Mick Brown’s radio program, according to NPR.

He also donated royalties from multiple hit songs. Childline founder Esther Rantzen said, “Over the years he gave us millions and we were planning next year, as part of our 30th anniversary celebrations to create, we hoped, a big concert in tribute to him — to his artistry, to his wonderful musicality but also to thank him for the hundreds of thousands of children he helped.”

In 1993, the Independent noted that Michael “doesn’t like to talk about the amount of work he does for charity,” according to NPR, and that he agreed to an interview only to promote his album for the benefit of the Mercury Phoenix Trust, an organization dedicated to curing AIDS.

“Everyone’s got really pissed off listening to celebrities patting each other on the back saying how generous they are being, and they are right to. The reason I am doing this interview is to support the Phoenix Trust. It’s very important these tracks get heard,” Michael said in the 1993 interview.

Although many of the accounts cannot be confirmed—Scottish comedian Brian Limond began parodying the tweets after the enormous outpouring—members of Michael’s estate have confirmed that the pop singer was both philanthropic and adamant about his anonymity.

His official website notes, “George began his long but mercifully mostly undocumented commitment to charity work with a performance on Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ and by donating all Wham! royalties from their ‘Last Christmas/Everything She Wants’ single to Ethiopian famine relief.”

Despite his longtime generosity, Michael was best known for his sexuality and drug use and spent decades battling the media’s homophobic crusade against him, according to NPR.

In 1998, after several years of dodging rumors of gay affairs, Michael was arrested for “engaging in a lewd act” in a public restroom after an undercover cop approached him for a sexual act. After the incident, he publically identified as gay and began to confront the media about his sexuality.

In 2005, he said in an interview with the Guardian, “You only have to turn on the television to see the whole of British society being comforted by gay men who are so clearly gay and so obviously sexually unthreatening. Gay people in the media are doing what makes straight people comfortable, and automatically my response to that is to say I’m a dirty filthy fucker and if you can’t deal with it, you can’t deal with it.”

In 2007, he shared that he had identified as bisexual until his Wham! album.

“I used to sleep with women quite a lot in the Wham! days but never felt it could develop into a relationship because I knew that, emotionally, I was a gay man. I didn’t want to commit to them but I was attracted to them. Then I became ashamed that I might be using them.”

The singer had several loves throughout his life that he eventually revealed, according to Heavy.

[Featured Image By MJ Kim/Getty Images]