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Wham! legend Andrew Ridgeley reveals how George Michael would have reacted to new documentary
Their era-defining trip to China in 1985 didn’t go as planned, recalls Andrew Ridgeley – but his beloved Yog would be proud of the candid new documentary.
Netflix
- Matt Charlton
Published: Monday, 24 August 2026 at 5:00 pm
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This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
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It was the second peak of the Cold War, a year after Frankie Goes to Hollywood sang of Two Tribes going to war; eight years after Bowie recorded Heroes a few hundred yards from the heavily guarded Berlin Wall, five years before David Hasselhoff would stand on top of it as it fell; and six before the band Scorpions would whistle about a Wind of Change. In 1985, no one had counted on two friends from Bushey journeying into one of the hearts of Communist power.
It was, ostensibly, a simple enough plan – one of the biggest pop bands of the 1980s would become the first Western act to play China, the centrepiece of which would be a live interview via satellite from Peking (as Beijing was then known) with US network TV. This would jumpstart Wham!’s ascendance in the States – a headline-grabbing alternative to a long US tour that would have put pressure on George Michael’s already suffering vocal cords. “Simon Napier-Bell, our very lateral-thinking manager, conceived the idea of going to China as a way to be beamed into the living rooms of ordinary Americans,” says Andrew Ridgeley.
Not only that, but the band’s entire visit would be captured for posterity in a film directed by highly regarded British New Wave film-maker, Lindsay Anderson. What could go wrong?
As the group’s plane touched down on the tarmac in Communist China, did Ridgeley feel the hand of history on his shoulder? “No, there was no sense,” he replies matter-of-factly. “I mean, obviously there was a sense of being in an authoritarian country ruled by an authoritarian regime, in this instance, communist. I think we were busy and focused on what our job there was.”
Ridgeley, softly spoken and looking about a decade younger than his 63 years, joins me over Zoom from his London home. He famously stepped away from the limelight in the late 1980s, graciously leaving his childhood friend George Michael, or “Yog” as he still affectionately calls him, to metamorphose into one of the biggest solo artists in the world. Is it strange for Ridgeley to be back in the media machine whenever there’s something Wham! to talk about? “It’s like getting back on a bike. It’s a bit more… civilised these days!”
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He has indeed been somewhat back on the Wham! treadmill – Netflix’s 2023 Wham! documentary marking the 40th anniversary of their debut album Fantastic, and the BBC’s 2024 Last Christmas Unwrapped, an in-depth look at one of the most successful Christmas songs of all time – but Wham! 10 Days in China is a very different proposition. Gone is the neon-lit, high-fashion, pastel-coloured aesthetic that we all associate with 80s pop in its pomp (though, don’t worry, the extraordinary, gravity-defying haircuts survive), as are the screaming fans. In their place are two jet-lagged, fed-up – though still immaculately dressed – lads in their early 20s trying to make it work among a hostile Western tabloid media, a stagnant, alien and slightly baffled country, and a geopolitical narrative of which they want no part.
It all amounts to a true time capsule – what was intended as a pop film has become cultural history. “To finally say, ‘Look, this is how it was. This is a genuine account’ was a fantastic thing to be able to do,” Ridgeley says.
Necessity is, of course, the mother of invention, and by 1985 Wham! needed a big idea. 1984 had seen them score their first UK and US number one with Wake Me Up before You Go-Go, followed by Freedom, a little song called Careless Whisper, and Last Christmas. Now they were ready to conquer America.
“We wanted to consolidate our success in the States,” Ridgeley explains. “We’d had a number one, and we’d done seven dates in early ’85. Ordinarily we would have gone back for a 30-to-90-day arena tour, but George wasn’t prepared to do that. Primarily, I think, because he’d suffered a breakdown with his voice during the Club Fantastic tour.”
Michael would be diagnosed with polyps on his vocal cords in the late 1980s, “but at that point in time, he didn’t know, and so he was unwilling to risk his voice. He didn’t like touring anyway, to be honest, though that changed.”
How did manager Simon Napier-Bell make the entirely illogical leap from not being able to tour the US to playing a country that had only seven years previously started to “open up” to the rest of the world?
George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley in Wham! Courtesy of Netflix
“Simon identified that as a potential way to make it newsworthy. He was left with very little choice: come up with some amazing idea, or risk wasting the opportunity and the good work that had gone before,” says Ridgeley. “He understood that, at that point in time, there was a fascination in the States with China.” He muses further on the kernel of the idea: “I wasn’t party to Simon’s thought process, but I’m sure it was along the lines of, ‘Let’s go somewhere that no one else has.’ I don’t know whether Yog, if push had come to shove, would have [toured the US], but, as it happened, Simon negated that need by conceiving what I thought was a crackpot idea.”
Rather brilliantly, you can see Ridgeley and Michael’s opinion of said idea throughout the film. I mention to Ridgeley that the pair of them remind me of two surly teenagers on a very underwhelming school field trip, wishing that they could be anywhere else. “I couldn’t see it. I was unaware of the potential for the US to be so engaged with the subject,” he says now. The eyerolling attitude, bonhomie and humour with which both Ridgeley and Michael carry themselves in the movie are a source of warmth during a tumultuous 10 days.
Tumult aside for now, was there a moment that stood out as particularly surreal? “We were there to perform a show, but a show also had to be made of Wham!, and that meant [going to] places like the British Ambassador’s residence. That was as stilted as it gets. I mean, it was extraordinary. We’d never really come into contact with people like that.” The function in question is all pipes, cricket-club ties, tank tops and warm beer. “They were nice enough, but wow. I mean, it was like something out of the 1930s!”
Then things took a turn. Director Lindsay Anderson broke his leg while in China, and the relationship between director and band deteriorated to the point that, by the end of the trip, they were barely on speaking terms, with Anderson’s film shelved soon afterwards.
Andrew Ridgeley attending the "WHAM! 10 Days In China" special screening at Soho House in London Jo Hale/Getty Images
“The Anderson documentary was neither here nor there, and didn’t achieve anything for him or us,” says Ridgeley. Worse was to come – after an uncomfortable performance in Peking, and with their backing band on a flight to the next destination of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton), Michael and Ridgeley got to the purpose of the trip, a satellite link-up with US morning television.
It was at this moment, however, that their trumpeter, Raul D’Oliveira, suffered a psychotic episode, stabbing himself in the stomach mid-flight. “The worst memory was learning of that incident on the plane. We knew nothing of what had happened, we only knew that it had been forced to turn back. You can see it on our faces. That was deeply concerning, because it’s not showbusiness, it’s real life. An altogether different kettle of fish.”
Processing this was hardly made easier by the constant presence of the press. I remark to Ridgeley my surprise that the documentary gives voice to some of the confrontational tabloid journalists who accompanied them on the trip, and their lack of contrition even now.
“Those accounts had to be incorporated, and rightly so, because it gives a genuine, authentic story. Engaging with the press was a Faustian pact. We had to have them there, and it was a news story they couldn’t miss. I’d have made it a little easier on myself, but I was sick and tired of them by then. My relationship with the press has improved dramatically since those days... the passage of time does gloss over some of the spikier bits.”
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And yet it’s the spikier bits they have chosen to leave in the documentary that lend it an edge and authenticity people wouldn’t perhaps associate with a band such as Wham!, nor the kind of forthrightness George Michael was known for in his later years. What would he make of this? “I think he would have been very content with it. It’s faithful to the two of us, being as natural as we possibly could be. This is the documentary that I was most looking forward to having made.”
Ultimately, does he think Wham! left an indelible mark on China? Can music as a “soft power” really have that kind of effect? “In a wider context, I don’t think it does. Subsequent to our visit, after Tiananmen Square [in 1989], China shut down again. Wham! can’t take credit for [the pro-democracy protest at] Tiananmen Square… that would be ludicrous. But we can take credit for enabling some individuals to unshackle themselves from expectations, from drudgery.”
Maybe that’s the most that pop music can hope to do – provide a temporary escape for some, and potentially a permanent one for others. As one of their Chinese fans observes in the movie, “It’s like a window opened in your mind.”
Wham! 10 Days in China airs 9pm on Saturday on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.
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Matt Charlton
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