Even Andrew Ridgeley’s enduring bitterness can’t spoil Wham! China docu – here’s why it’s hard to feel sorry for him

HALF an hour into BBC2’s Wham!: 10 Days In China masterpiece, a journalist asked the 1985 version of Andrew Ridgeley a question that went to the heart of his professional relationship with George Michael. “What do each of you bring to the partnership?” George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley in China in 1985 Credit: ¿ Andrew Ridgeley/ Big Geoff Overseas Limited/Robobuild Limited t/a George Michael Entertainment/Martyn Goddard. All Rights Reserved Ridgeley back at the Great Wall for BBC2’s Wham!: 10 Days In China Credit: ¿ Craig Hastings. All Rights Reserved Honest answer? George brings the songs, lyrics, voice, charm and genius. Andrew brings a tartan suit and sunglasses. But instead, the visibly riled guitarist, who was on a walkabout in downtown Beijing, ummed and ahhed a bit, before replying: “Well, I always bring the tea, he brings the cake and the sandwiches.” Then he glared at the journalist. And he’s been glaring at them ever since judging by 10 Days In China. A superb film which welded together contemporary interviews and original footage of the two landmark gigs in China where they got off to an absolute flier with the introductions at a state banquet in Wham’s honour. “Famous British singing star . . . George Mickel. An’ famous British singing star . . . An’roo Widdly.” Frankly, if nothing else quite as funny had happened over the rest of the 85 minutes, I’d still have been hooked on this documentary. Happy to report, though, that there was a Spinal Tap quality to the 10 Days where everything that could possibly have gone wrong did go wrong. The director of the original and long-lost film, Oscar-winning Lindsay Anderson, knackered his knee and ended up in a wheelchair. Andrew insulted everything that moved. One of Wham’s trumpeters stabbed himself on a flight to the second gig in Guangzhou, covering Pepsi & Shirlie in blood. And the support act, a breakdancer called Trevor, caused a minor international incident by writhing around and doing pelvic thrusts in front of senior Communist Party officials. With the result? Chinese police went ape-s**t and arrested everyone who started dancing and Wham! performed to a terrified silence in Beijing. If there was a weakness here it was that we got no update on Trevor, who’d been booked by the band’s manager Simon Napier-Bell because he was so cheap compared with every other part of this gigantic PR stunt. The rest were all present and correct, though and it was a cast list of your TV dreams which included: Pepsi, Shirlie, Simon Napier-Bell, who correctly saw the trip as a short-cut to cracking America, a very solemn Chinese translator called Ling Ling and the Daily Star’s former showbiz correspondent Rick Sky, who arrived to be interviewed dressed as a stretcher-bearer from the Rajputana Rifles. And then, of course, there was A­n’roo Widdly. Poor poor An’roo. You’d have some sympathy with him, living in the shadow of one of pop’s greatest geniuses, if he wasn’t so haughty and disdainful. Four decades after they split, he also seems incapable of sharing any of the carefree happiness Wham! brought to the world. Or indeed doing anything other than continuing a one-way feud with the press that was so pig-headed he took the Chinese Communist Party line over the arrests at the opening gig rather than acknowledge the truth of tabloid reports. His enduring bitterness could have cast a terrible shadow over 10 Days In China. The fact it doesn’t is ultimately down to the music of George Michael, which was so infectious even the solemn comrades of China, a place once described by writer PJ O’Rourke as “the land that rhythm forgot”, ended the tour embracing the band at a frenzied and triumphant second gig in Guangzhou. Timing is everything, naturally. In 1985, just as Wham! were on the brink of conquering the US, China was also ready to cast off the grim socialist economy that had starved and bored its population to death and embrace the happy prosperity of capitalism. It’s pushing the truth to suggest the country was given the decisive nudge by Wham!’s arrival. But they certainly left a slice of the population, in the words of one Chinese fan, with “a sense we could feel freedom. It was like opening a window”. And that’s quite a legacy. (Wham!: 10 Days In China is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer.) UNEXPECTED MORONS IN THE BAGGING AREA TIPPING Point, Ben Shephard: “How many sides does an isosceles triangle have?” Steve: “Five.” Ben Shephard: “Goal.com is a website that provides news and information about which ball sport?” Shilpa: “Golf.” The Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In England what letter is attached to a vehicle to indicate its user is learning how to drive?” Donna Preston: “A car.” RANDOM IRRITATIONS BBC London’s Briohny Williams failing to mention hundreds of arrests (many for sexual assault) during a shameful Bank Holiday Monday report from the Notting Hill Carnival. Good Morning Britain refusing even to discuss the possibility that the “illegal developers” who destroyed a wildlife haven in Hertfordshire might be travellers rather than, say, the local tennis club. BBC1’s “tense drama” Vigil, which could bore the bronze bollocks off The Thinker. And the relentlessly puritanical BBC giving a “discriminatory language” trigger warning before screening a 1978 Top Of The Pops episode featuring Jilted John. Morons. IT JUST WON’T WASH Vicky McClure and her bomb disposal planks are trying to stop another group of terrorists destroying London, armed only with a torch and a set of pliers in ITV’s Trigger Point Credit: PA OVER on the fourth series of ITV’s Trigger Point, Vicky “Lana Washington” McClure and her bomb disposal planks are trying to stop another group of terrorists destroying London, armed only with a torch and a set of pliers. Who these madmen are, we do not yet know. Based on past runs, though, I am ruling out any possibility they may be Islamic whackjobs. Nor are any of the characters even raising it as a possibility, thereby destroying the credibility not just of the drama but ITV’s as well. The live mystery, however, is how the terrorists will ever be dumb enough to be caught by Lana’s institutionally thick EXPO team. Thickest of the lot is probably a fresh recruit called Wren, who heard boss DCI Batra being blown to smithereens in episode one. She then listened intently as a colleague told her “Bronze Investigator One was closest to the device and has not survived the blast”, before exclaiming: “He’s dead? How?” In fairness to her, stupidity does go all the way to the top at EXPO, where you’ll find Julie Graham’s Nia Quentin who has a “Gold Command” of the bleeding obvious and a dreadful habit of saying: “You disarm the device before it reaches its target.” Thank goodness then for the all-seeing wisdom of torch-wielding Lana Washington who, with multiple explosions still ringing in her ears, told her numskull unit: “These people have got explosives and we don’t know what they’ve got planned.” Me neither, Wash. But maybe brace for more explosions. THIS Morning’s question of the week. Sian Welby: “Could crystals be the answer to achieving your dreams?” No, but growing the hell up would certainly help. EASTENDERS, Gina: “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting.” Appreciated, but it means nothing until I’ve heard from the rest of the cast. LOOKALIKE OF THE WEEK Erling Haaland, left, and Alan Tracy from the original Thunderbirds, right Credit: Unknown THIS week’s winner is Erling Haaland and Alan Tracy from the original Thunderbirds. Sent by Tom Eadie, London. GREAT SPORTING INSIGHTS JAMIE CARRAGHER: “I wouldn’t say Saliba is the only world-class player in the Arsenal team, but I think he is.” Stuart Broad: “We stood a long time for the portrait sitting.” And Ashley Williams: “That’s where the game was won for Forest even though they didn’t win.” (Compiled by Graham Wray) TV GOLD The Benidorm Is Murder finale on Channel 5 is TV gold Credit: PA BBC2’s touching, funny and unforgettable documentary Wham: 10 Days In China stood out a mile from everything else on the telly this week. But honourable mentions should also go to: Channel 4’s 24 Hours In Police Custody and The Jury: 14 And On Trial For Murder, Netflix’s The Whisper Man (if you enjoy having the crap scared out of you), BBC1’s brilliant cosy crime drama Ludwig, the horrifyingly brutal Stolen Babies on BBC2, the Benidorm Is Murder finale on Channel 5, and Celebrity MasterChef co-host Giorgio Locatelli summing up not just TommyInnit’s dessert but his entire YouTube career in just four words: “Tom’s doing some waffle.” GREAT TV LIES AND DELUSIONS OF THE MONTH Good Morning Britain, Labour Party fan-girl Ranvir Singh: “Andy Burnham is a great communicator, we can all accept.” (We can?) Celebrity MasterChef, India Fisher: “From Bolton to the bright lights of prime-time, Paddy McGuinness has become one of Britain’s most beloved entertainers.” And Celebrity Hunted, Brian Conley’s daughter Lucy: “Dad, stop being funny.” Stop? STOP? I’ve been waiting for him to start since Summertime Special, in 1987. MEANWHILE, back on Celebrity MasterChef, Grace Dent: “Max (Fosh), you’ve made it so long the only way I can eat it is by curling and curling and curling and then putting this enormous thing into my mouth. “If we were on a date together and you saw me do that would you want to see me again? Grace, if you did that on a date, he’d never even want to eat again. CELEBRITY MasterChef throuplee Una Healy: “I grew up in a house in Ireland where it was all meat and two veg.” Una Healy appears on Celebrity MasterChef Credit: BBC Before moving into a house in London, with David Haye, where it was all meat and two veg.