You might remember him as Billy Elliot’s best friend, the one who liked dressing up in his sisters’ clothes and wearing make-up.  We last saw him in the audience for a performance of Swan Lake, with a grown-up Billy taking the lead role.  On one side of him were Billy’s dad and brother; on the other, we assumed his black friend.  Michael himself wore woman’s clothing with little skill.

We were never told whether Michael was a “poof” (sic), homosexual, transvestite or whatever but he was almost certainly captured somewhere within the LGBTQIA….etc etc etc compound, but as to what we do not know; nor should we care.

His companion on the Night at the Opera was Winston and, again, we were never told  of the relationship between them – pimp, boyfriend, bezzie, flatmate; but again, it doesn’t matter.

But the nature of the human condition is that some stars rise and burn bright in clear night skies while others do not.  Billy escaped his pit village home of Evrington (Easington) although I’d like to think it never left him, to become an unlikely working class ballerino 

They found Michael’s body some years later in an alleyway in St Pancras.

Heroin.