As she watched her 19-year-old son achieve his first pop success alongside his best friend from school, Jennifer Ridgeley sat down at her modest home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, opened a brand new scrapbook and proudly pasted in the first few cuttings about their band – Wham!
She was to lovingly curate another 49 scrapbooks in all, and her meticulously neat handiwork has now become the backbone of Netflix’s new Wham! film.
His mother’s devotion and eye for detail is a legacy passed on to Andrew.
Now aged 60, and splitting his time between London and Cornwall, he smiles at the mention of Jennifer’s cuttings. ‘They are a wonderful piece of memorabilia to have,’ he says. ‘They do span from the word go right up to The Final. There are 50 of them.
‘And actually I am discussing them with the George Michael Estate. One of the things I’ve talked about doing is a yearbook. I think there are a number of ways in which we could edit the content in the scrapbooks to produce something that the fans would really like. That is definitely something that I will be doing…
‘Unfortunately, mum passed in 2009 so I’ve had them and they’ve been digitised for posterity so they shall hopefully live forever.’
Jennifer clearly had no doubt that her energetic, zestful son – such a handful for his teachers at school – was destined for fame. And for Andrew, watching the Netflix retelling of how he found superstardom alongside schoolpal and best friend George Michael must have been emotional indeed.
‘I thought it would be a success but the scale and the warmth and the positivity of the response has actually taken me somewhat by surprise.’ Andrew admits.
‘I knew people were going to like it. I think that director Chris Smith really gets to the nub of what made Wham! attractive and perhaps set it apart from other acts of the era. Over the socials and the press it has been overwhelmingly positive.
‘It’s very well done by Chris. I think he makes it very clear that Yog [Andrew’s nickname for George, from his birth name Georgios] and I did see things very much the same way and had much the same ambitions and aims.
‘I specifically wanted the documentary to illustrate the global breadth of Wham!’s success to a new digital generation and give context – people at Sony making us aware that there is a strong youth element that have been exposed to Wham! via TikTok or whatever else but who were not necessarily aware of the full story.’
Taped interviews with George and Andrew recall the moment in Ibiza, while filming the Club Tropicana video, when George came out to singing partner Shirlie and Andrew.
They were just 19-years-old, still living at home with their parents – and yet everyone’s biggest concern was not to tell George’s mum and dad.
Andrew recalls: ‘On the one hand George didn’t necessarily feel he had to keep it to himself. There was a part of me that couldn’t see why he couldn’t make it public. I didn’t see that he had to. I certainly didn’t feel he was under any obligation to, but I didn’t feel there would be any real downside apart from his dad.
‘His dad was the first thing we thought of. Shirlie as well. We went, “Oh no, that is definitely not something you should tell your dad.” Unfortunately, at 19-years-old we didn’t see much past that.’
George passed away on Christmas Day 2016, aged 53, leaving Andrew devastated.
Today, Andrew only has one momento of his years in one of pop’s most successful duos. ‘I’ve got my Ivor Novello award.’ He says. ‘Everything else has been auctioned for charity or given away to friends.’
Last month, Andrew was invited to celebrate what would have been George’s 60th birthday – on June 25.
He says: ‘George’s sister Yioda had a small gathering. You can imagine it is a sensitive occasion in so far as whilst it would have been Yog’s birthday it’s not his birthday.
‘I wasn’t there because I was travelling up to Scotland because we started my charity bike ride on the 26th so I was unable to attend. But Yioda has some friends round so that the occasion was marked. It was a low-key affair and that’s how she wanted to keep it.’
The bike ride that Andrew refers to is a cause close to his own heart. He’s raising money for Papyrus–UK – the charity dedicated to the prevention of young suicide.
His ride was from John O’ Groats to Land’s End and cycling beside him was his close friend Ben, who lost his daughter Lucy in 2021.
‘It was pretty bloody brutal at times,’ Andrew recalls. ‘The weather turned a day before we set off. But it was an amazing experience. We got to see some incredible scenery and it was great to have my chums along to share it with. The initial target to raise for Papyrus was £10,000 but we are up to £25,000 now. It’s going very well.’
Did the Netflix film change his appreciation of his pop success?
‘Obviously, it is part of my life. It’s not something that goes away but it has been brought into focus,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘It has reminded me of what good times they were. It was a golden chapter in our lives.
‘That sense of it being a wonderful time and perhaps something it was easy to take for granted. Certainly, I was guilty of that to a degree. Looking back on it now I think that really was quite something and a privilege. But we felt that Wham! would be successful. The scale of it was perhaps far greater than we expected.’
And nobody would have been prouder than Andrew’s mother Jennifer – whose scrapbooks will live on forever.
To donate to Papyrus-UK visit linktr.ee/andrewridgeley
Wham! is on Netflix now.
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