Victoria Derbyshire interviews childhood idol in ‘surreal pinch-me’ second
Ridgeley, who shaped the band with George Michael in 1981 and went on to launch primary singles Last Christmas and I’m Your Man, was interviewed for BBC’s Newsnight a couple of new Netflix movie documenting Wham!’s rise to fame.
TV broadcaster Derbyshire, 54, shared an image on Instagram which captures her taking a selfie with Ridgeley, in addition to her ticket to the October 2 1983 live performance on the Apollo Theatre Manchester and her prolonged diary entry after the present.
She stated: “If you’d have told me that 40 years after going to see Wham! live at the Manchester Apollo, I would be sitting down with @andrewjohnridgeley to interview him – there is literally NO WAY I would have believed you.
“I wrote about it in my diary, Oct 1983. No detail was too small – as you can see if you swipe right.
“Also there was SO MUCH to say about the gig, the set, the outfits – everything – I had to add loads of extra sheets of paper.
“So interviewing Andrew Ridgeley was a surreal, wonderful pinch-me moment.”
Derbyshire shared a video of the reams of pages she had written in her diary as a teenage woman after watching the present.
One insert learn: “The set was a black and white picture of Andrew on the left, George on the right and Wham! in massive silver letters on the back. Then there was steps going up towards the back.
“It was all dark and suddenly it was intro to Young Guns and the lights went up, all the musicians and backing.
“Singers were on and then George and Andrew ran on. Everyone was really screaming and they looked gorgeous, especially Andrew!”
Derbyshire stated she and Ridgeley spoke concerning the new 90-minute documentary titled Wham! which she describes as “poignant, beautiful and joyous”.
She stated: “He is genuinely such a lovely person and you’ll be able to see that from the doc.
“In our interview he talked about his love for George Michael, the stratospheric success they achieved when just teenagers, the challenges that came with that, and whether he could envisage an ABBA-style avatar show for Wham (the answer is YES).”
Michael, whose actual title was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, died in 2016 on the age of 53.