(London) Openly gay singer Boy George has been released from prison after four months of a 5 month sentence for the false imprisonment of a gay escort.

A prison official said the performer was being let go early for good behavior.  He still will have to wear an ankle bracelet for the duration of his sentence and obey a curfew.

Prison appears to have been good for the singer, whose real name is George O’Dowd.  When he left Edmunds Hill Prison in Suffolk on Monday he was noticeably thinn er and had a neatly trimmed beard which he grown while behind bars.

The 47 year old was sentenced in January. During the trial the court was told that O’Dowd met 29-year-old rent boy Audun Carlsen on a gay internet site and agreed to meet at the singer’s home where Carlsen was to pose for a naked photo shoot.

The two men later exchanged emails and at one point O’Dowd accused Carlsen of hacking into his computer and stealing the photos. Nevertheless, O’Dowd invited Carlsen to another photo shoot at his home.

It was a plot to exact revenge, the prosecution said, for what O’Dowd believed was theft of the original pictures.

After O’Dowd had taken several photos of Carlsen, the performer invited the younger man into his bedroom.

When Carlsen entered the room he realized a second man had joined O’Dowd. O’Dowd has refused to name the other man.

Carlsen was forced to the floor.

“Mr O’Dowd produced a set of handcuffs. They placed one end on Mr Carlsen’s right wrist and the other end was placed through a hook that was screwed to a fixture near the bed,” prosecutor Heather Norton told the court during the trial.

She said that Carlsen, “was frightened, shaking and crying. His fear increased when Mr O’Dowd returned into the room carrying with him a box.”

The box, said Norton, contained chains and leather straps.

Carlsen managed to free himself by pulling a hook the handcuffs were attached to from the wall.  He escaped through a window clad in only his underwear and called police from a local news vendor’s stand.

O’Dowd did not testify on his own behalf, but the court. In a transcript of a police interrogation O’Dowd admitted he handcuffed Carlsen but denied punching or assaulting the hustler.

The performer’s attorney suggested that bruises Carlsen had could have been due to the fact that he was HIV positive.

It was the latest brush O’Dowd has had with the law.

In 2006, a judge in New York City sentenced him to five days of community service after being convicted of filing a false police report.

The singer had called police in October 2005 with a bogus report of a burglary by a male prostitute at his lower Manhattan apartment. When police went to investigate they found cocaine inside.

He was originally charged with drug offenses but under an agreement with prosecutors he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges and worked off his sentence picking garbage.