On the shockingly hilarious and criminally under-watched Fox sitcom Arrested Development, the teenage character George Michael (played with squirm-inducing pathos by Michael Cera) suffers a parade of tortures, from debilitating lust for his cousin to widespread exposure for his humiliating homemade light-sabre video.

But who would’ve guessed the real George Michael had an even worse existence? Not me, until I read this story from the London Guardian, detailing the former Wham! man’s years of hideous suffering.

Among the horrors: the death-from-AIDS of Michael’s boyfriend in 1993, which sent Michael into a clinical depression and was soon followed the death of Michael’s mother; the development of a crippling paralysis, for which Michael underwent a major back operation before learning the paralysis was psychosomatic; and finally, Michael’s depression-fighting purchase of a Labrador puppy, which promptly drowned in the Thames.

But now he’s doing better. Read all about it here.