Rick Astley to replace Boy George

RICK Astley has stepped in to replace Boy George on the Here & Now Tour after the former Culture Club singer was jailed for 15 months for handcuffing a male escort to a wall and beating him with a metal chain.

The man behind the hits Never Going To Give You Up and Together Forever will now headline the eighties tour which comes to the Trent FM Arena on May 16.

He'll be joined by Kim Wilde, Howard Jones, Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Altered Images, Brother Beyond and Hazel O Connor.

Boy George, whose real name is George O'Dowd, was handed his sentence on Friday for falsely imprisoning Audun Carlsen during a drug-fuelled naked photoshoot at his flat in Shoreditch, east London.