Boy George impersonator and X-Factor star ‘looks 10 years younger’ after hair transplant that’s boosted his confidence

A Boy George tribute artist from Blackpool who started balding at 24 has elevated his self-confidence by having a hair transplant and looks forward to bringing himself to “the forefront of show business”.

Liam Halewood, 39, has been performing on stage since he was 16, when he was a drag artist in his hometown of Liverpool. From there, he’s grown his career through various tribute acts – as comedian Alan Carr, Culture Club’s Boy George, and even as part of a Village People tribute group – and even appeared on The X Factor in 2015 as part of his singing career.

However, he feels he has “lived half of my life out as someone else”, and wanted to reclaim his confidence by dealing with his receding hairline in the hope that he can “bring Liam Halewood to the forefront of show business”.

Liam began losing his hair when he was 24. He first noticed balding on the crown of his head, but as the years went by his hair loss became more profound, until he’d lost all the hair on the top of his head and was left only with hair around the sides.

He acquiesced to his male pattern baldness, choosing to shave his head entirely, but didn’t like the way it looked, finding it severely impacted his self-esteem and confidence.

Over the years, Liam said he has spent around £20,000 on various cosmetic procedures including Botox, fillers, teeth implants and whitening, and while he eventually decided to stop with the tweaks, he remained self-conscious about his hair loss.

On February 8 2025, at their engagement party, Liam’s fiance Michael surprised him with the gift of a hair transplant appointment at the Wimpole Clinic in London, and he was thrilled.

“The next thing, in July, I was there in Harley Street,” he said.

Now, six months on from his first hair transplant session, Liam believes he looks 10 years younger and is over the moon with his results, and the impact it’s had on his self-confidence.

“People think that I have this exuberance of confidence in this big, massive showbiz personality on the stage,” Liam told PA Real Life.

“But I used to come home and think: ‘Oh, I used to love doing my hair and putting wax in my hair, and getting a hair dryer and blow drying my hair and putting a bit of colour on it. And I’m an ex-hairdresser as well…

“But I can’t even do anything with my hair now, apart from get the Bic razor and go over it.”

While he’s performed as the likes of Boy George, flamboyant “icons” of music that exude confidence, Liam said he had to work hard on developing his craft and building his own stage presence and self-esteem to further his career.

“Boy George is an icon,” he said.

“So to pull an icon off, you have to be ballsy, you have to be brutal with your decisions in your career, because you just know, if he sees this, you want him to see the bloody best.”

“Being on stage and stuff like that, people will be like, ‘Oh, you have bags of confidence’… But unfortunately, we are in a world of social media and that is part of the showbiz world now, whether we like it or not…” he added, admitting he’s faced his fair share of negativity, leading to him wanting to make this physical change that would help him feel more confident in his own skin.

“You have to ignore (a lot). 90% of people are not going to like you.”

Liam was nervous when he arrived at the Wimpole Clinic for his £5,500 hair transplant procedure in July 2025. He was worried the process would be painful, that the results might not be quite what he wanted – but in hindsight, he knows he need not have worried.

The procedure as a whole – including retrieving the grafts from his existing hair and implanting them into his scalp – took around 10 hours, but Liam found he even fell asleep during the graft retrieval process and that there was “no pain, for me, whatsoever”.

He was prescribed some diazepam by his doctors at the clinic as he had slightly elevated blood pressure, and he found the medication calmed him so much he drifted off to sleep and woke up to find they were already halfway through the follicle extraction from the donor areas of his head.

The next stage was implantation, where his surgical team, including Dr Bilijana Djordevic and Dr Chirag Gadhia, made tiny incisions in the balding areas and inserted the prepared hair grafts. Then, the scalp was cleaned, dressings were applied, and Liam was ready to go home.

While Liam found the procedure didn’t hurt, he said the itching during the healing process was “horrendous”.

“I cried with the itchiness,” he said.

“If you touch it, it’s game over. You’re gonna knock all the hair out of the follicles, all that work’s undone. Luckily, I had my partner next to me going: ‘Don’t itch it, you’re going to ruin it!’”

Liam had to sleep upright, so as not to put pressure on his head while it healed, and was given a course of steroids to help with healing and recovery. He also had a saline solution to clean the wounds which helped relieve some of the itchiness, but said: “If I could have had the pain, I would have rather the pain, because at least you can take paracetamol!”

After around four days, the itching subsided, and Liam could look ahead to seeing his results after he had healed. He’s so impressed with the head of hair he now has that he has booked another appointment next spring to get another hair transplant on the crown of his head.

Now, Liam is looking forward to hitting the stage as Liam Halewood, building on his career as a tribute act to “icons” like Boy George and Alan Carr with the added confidence that comes with having a full head of hair.

He’s due to tie the knot on February 15 2026 and can’t wait to feel “confident in my suit” with his luscious locks.