Ridgeley Recalls Wham! China Tour, Lost Anderson Film
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- Wham! became the first Western pop act to play in China during their 1985 tour, masterminded by manager Simon Napier-Bell as a calculated shortcut to US fame rather than a cultural exchange
- Andrew Ridgeley reflects on the trip in the new documentary "Wham! 10 Days in China," featuring previously unseen archive footage and new interviews with Chinese fans and musicians affected by the visit
- Lindsay Anderson — director of "This Sporting Life" and "O Lucky Man!" — was hired to film the tour but was fired after six months when Wham! rejected his cut as 'as dull as dishwater'
- George Michael blocked any public release of Anderson's rejected film, "If You Were There…," during his lifetime; it was only screened publicly as part of the BFI's 2024 Anderson season after his 2016 death
- Mike Christie discovered more than 20 hours of footage in 100-plus cans of Super 16 film that had sat untouched in storage for decades when he began work in September 2024
- Cheng Fangyuan, the Chinese singer who recorded Chinese-language versions of Wham!'s songs for ticket holders, called the tour 'like opening a window' and 'a historical event'
- Netflix released its "Wham!" documentary in 2023 and the BBC followed with "Wham!: Last Christmas Unwrapped" in 2024, making "10 Days in China" the third recent documentary about the band
Why it matters: Wham!'s 1985 China trip was engineered not as cultural diplomacy but as a US-market shortcut, and Ridgeley concedes the gambit worked — landing the duo on US national news and front pages without grinding through a 90-date arena tour. The deeper revelation is the Lindsay Anderson debacle: an acclaimed art-film director, paid in cash, made a documentary the band refused to release, and his rejected cut remains locked away even after Michael's death.
