Updated

Updated · Fox News · Jul 25

Andrew Ridgeley Revisits Wham!'s 1985 China Tour, Says George Michael Never Resolved Fame Conflict

Updated

Updated · Fox News · Jul 25

Andrew Ridgeley Revisits Wham!'s 1985 China Tour, Says George Michael Never Resolved Fame Conflict

Q: What unseen footage finally reveals the intensely private man hidden behind George Michael's carefully crafted superstar mask?

The unseen footage is the newly restored archival material in **“WHAM! 10 Days In China,”** especially candid behind-the-scenes scenes from Wham!’s 1985 China trip that had been shelved for decades. Those long-lost images, originally filmed during the historic Beijing and Guangzhou concerts, show George Michael away from the polished public image he built as a superstar. They capture his visible discomfort with the tightly managed official events, his frustration at ceremonial appearances, his private jokes to camera, and even the moment he walked out midway through signing cassettes for fans. Together, those moments reveal the more guarded, reluctant man Andrew Ridgeley describes as “Yog” — someone who could perform fame, but never fully embraced living inside it. The documentary also uses new interviews from Ridgeley and others on the tour to place that footage in context. Ridgeley says Michael spent much of his life caught between celebrity and privacy, and the recovered film helps illustrate that tension in real time rather than through myth or hindsight. So the answer is not a single hidden tape of confession, but a body of **previously unseen, restored behind-the-scenes footage from the China tour** that shows George Michael’s irritation, wit, reserve and resistance to the machinery of stardom.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Jul 25

Andrew Ridgeley said George Michael lived with an “eternal conflict” between the public star he created and the private man friends knew as “Yog” ahead of the July 28 documentary release.
Ridgeley said fans often missed not Michael’s personality but the scale of his talent, describing the singer as intensely private despite decades of global fame.
The film, “WHAM! 10 Days In China,” revisits Wham!’s 1985 Beijing and Guangzhou concerts — the first by a Western pop group in China — using restored footage and unseen material.
Ridgeley said the documentary finally clarified the trip’s legacy, showing the shows had life-changing impact in China even though Michael had sharply criticized the first performance.
Michael, who died in 2016 at 53, would have been humbled by the lasting admiration for his work, Ridgeley said.