Victoria Derbyshire has described interviewing Wham! member Andrew Ridgeley as a “wonderful pinch-me moment”, recalling watching the 80s pop sensation in concert at the age of 15.
Ridgeley, who formed the band with George Michael in 1981 and went on to release number one singles Last Christmas and I’m Your Man, was interviewed for BBC’s Newsnight about a new Netflix film documenting Wham!’s rise to fame.
TV broadcaster Derbyshire, 54, shared a picture on Instagram which captures her taking a selfie with Ridgeley, as well as her ticket to the October 2 1983 concert at the Apollo Theatre Manchester and her lengthy diary entry after the show.
She said: “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 girl after watching the show.
One insert read: “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 said she and Ridgeley spoke about the new 90-minute documentary titled Wham! which she describes as “poignant, beautiful and joyous”.
She said: “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 real name was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, died in 2016 at the age of 53.