Colour By Numbers by Culture Club, Virgin Record Label, 12" Picture Disc LP. 1983. Value £40

THIS is the band's second album.

The name Culture Club came from the the fact that the four group members came from different backgrounds - Irish (Boy George), Jewish (Jon Moss), Jamaican (Mikey Craig) and English (Roy Hay).

This image of Boy George with braided hair, make up and an androgynous persona, drew huge media attention at the time.

The band benefited from being part of the MTV video generation, which really helped the album to take off and introduce a music genre known as the 'New Romantics'.

Karma Chameleon, taken from the album and featuring the harmonica playing of session player Judd Langer, was the most successful single of the band's musical career.

It topped the UK singles chart in September 1983, was Britain's best-selling single for the next six weeks and outsold every other record that year. It topped the charts in 16 countries, with 16 million copies sold worldwide.

Colour By Numbers topped the charts for five weeks, while in the US it spent six weeks at No 2, unable to displace Michael Jackson's Thriller. It spent more than a year on both charts and sold in excess of 10 million copies internationally, four million in the UK alone.

It eventually topped the Billboard charts in February 1984, remaining there for three weeks. It was the only American chart topper since The Beatles to feature three top ten singles from a follow-up album.

The group all contributed to the song Karma Chameleon. George described the song as being meaningful: "What we're saying is if you are not true to yourself, if you do not act like you feel, then you get Karma or justice. That's nature's way of paying you back, or just life paying you back."

The video for the single showed the band on an 1870s Mississippi river boat (actually named The Chameleon), featuring characters dressed as rogues, pickpockets and gamblers, with scenery depicting an American Deep South backdrop, although it was actually filmed around Desborough Island near Weybridge, Surrey.

That year the band won the Brit awards for Best Group and Best Single plus a Grammy for Best New artists of 1983.

Who can forget a playful George via a satellite link up to the US saying: " Thanks America, you have style, you have taste and you know a good drag queen when you see one!"

Culture Club's latest release 'Life' is out now with only a limited number of copies being released on vinyl.