Andrew Ridgeley: ‘Wham! concerts changed lives in China’

He finds the music continues to inspire young people, not just in China but across the globe, because of its “vibrancy and vitality”.

“To know that it has the sort of impact on people’s lives, and still does, that’s something that I don’t think we could have guessed at,” he says.

For Ridgeley it was an unlikely meeting at Bushey Meads School in 1974 that changed lives around the world.

It was there that a 12-year-old Ridgeley first met the “new boy,” Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, who later became George, but is still known to his friend as “Yog”.

When a teacher asked for a volunteer to help the newcomer settle in, Ridgeley was the only pupil to raise his hand.

He says he does not believe in fate, but admits: “It was a sliding doors moment… it shaped the rest of our lives, which is quite something.”

At the time, Ridgeley could never have imagined that a small act of kindness in a Hertfordshire classroom would eventually help change lives on the other side of the world.

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