Pete Burns in Profile

Great British eccentric or a lilo-lipped megafreak? Electropop icon or washed-up has-been? Celebrity Big Brother's sharp-tongued saviour or the cruelest housemate of all time? Whatever your take on Pete Burns, it's hard not to be enthralled by the bullishly idiosyncratic way he lives his life. As he prepares to lasso an unsuspecting innocent into working for him on Pete's PA, Gay Spy poses an all too pertinent question: why are we so fascinated by Pete Burns?

The obvious answer, of course, is to shout "Because he looks so bloody weird!" Burns' insatiable appetite for cosmetic enhancement makes Joan Rivers seem like the poster girl for growing old gracefully. He's repeatedly re-sculpted his nose, experimented with glyceric peels and enjoys regular doses of Botox. "If you own a car, you change that every few years and that's just what I'm doing with my appearance," he reasons coolly. But his commitment to facial metamorphosis has come at a price. In the early noughties, an Italian doctor injected Burns' lips with a temporary filler called Outline, causing swelling, blisters, unsightly lumps and a gooey yellow discharge. He's since undergone more than 100 operations to correct the damage, and the resultant lawsuit is ongoing.

Burns' elastic approach towards his sexuality has also been a regular source of intrigue. His marriage to Liverpool hairdresser Lynne Corlett lasted more than 20 years, during which time Burns refused to concede that his increasingly androgynous appearance had an effect on their relationship: "I really love her and she loves me back and why shouldn't she? Because I'm not Brad Pitt?" Although Burns and Corlett divorced in 2006, he remains close enough to his ex-wife to cajole her into proffering the odd sound bite on Pete's PA. However, Burns wasted little time in moving on from the breakdown of his marriage, marrying emerging artist Michael Simpson in July last year. As viewers of Celebrity Wife Swap will know, Simpson's role in the relationship is varied - he appears to serve as Burns' cook, cleaner, confidant, companion, make-up advisor, wardrobe assistant and lover - but it seems to work.

And then there's the infamous Burns tongue: as cheap and sharp as an Essex girl's stiletto, as caustic as a vat of hydrochloric acid, and as withering as a blow-torch aimed at a newly-bloomed orchid. In a notorious CBB moment, he aimed a vicious torrent of abuse at former Baywatch star Traci Bingham, criticising her perceived falseness and dubbing her a "f**king wreck". What most resonated from this episode – literally 50 minutes of cruelty without beauty - was his blase reaction to his blistering tirade: "I'm done with her. I wiped the floor with her," he nonchalantly informed his fellow housemates afterwards. But, unlike most celebrities who get landed with the "acid-tongued" tag, Burns has the bite to back up his bile-infected bark. When internet gossip circular Popbitch alleged that he'd been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, Burns exacted revenge by posting the names and phone numbers of the previously anonymous Popbitch staff on the Dead or Alive website, before linking the information to 73 other celebrity web journals. Those who cross Pete Burns, it seems, do so at their peril.

Because his public persona is so mesmerising, so outlandish, it's easy to forget why Pete Burns pricked our consciousness in the first place. As lead singer of barn-storming electro-poppers Dead or Alive, he scored one of the defining hits of the eighties with 'You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)', a song which returned to the top five in the wake of his CBB appearance. Dead Or Alive scored a handful of other hits in the mid and late eighties – 'In Too Deep', 'Lover Come Back To Me' and 'Something In My House' all caressed the edges of the top ten – but the group was ultimately consigned to cult status in Blighty. In Japan, however, Dead Or Alive ascended to megastar status; in the early nineties, Michael Jackson was forced to postpone a tour of the nation to avoid a clash with Burns and his band of synth-pop minstrels.

His appearance might generally force him to operate on the peripheries of the mainstream – or Living, as it tends to be known - and he doesn't always employ his verbal dexterity for the most virtuous of means, but it's impossible to deny that Pete Burns has moulded himself into a compellingly unique creation. "I'm not the boy next door," he admits. "If you want the boy next door, f**king go next door."