The idea of sending a chart-topping two-piece boyband barely in their 20s to China as cultural ambassadors for the UK would be considered laughable by most. After all, it’s regarded as one of the most authoritarian countries in the world not to mention a serious security concern to other nations. But that’s exactly what happened three decades ago when chart toppers Wham! swapped screaming arenas for state banquets as the first Western pop stars to perform in communist China. By April 1985, George Michael, then 21, and his best friend Andrew Ridgeley, then 22, were accustomed to audiences of screaming teens and being mobbed wherever they went.

However, for just under two weeks, they performed the unusual role of diplomatic attachés as they navigated the delicate political culture at numerous receptions and banquets, while performing their hits at two shows in Beijing and Guangzhou. Four decades later, a remarkable new documentary, Wham! 10 Days in China, reveals the extraordinary political, cultural and personal story behind the historic visit – whose true impact director Mike Christie believes has only become clear with the passing of time. Utilising astonishing archive footage and new interviews with the people who were there – including Andrew Ridgely, who returned to the country for the first time in 40 years – the film delves deep into the legacy of the visit to examine its impact.

“Andrew hadn't been back since 1985, he was very keen to come with us,” says Christie, speaking to the Express ahead of the film’s release this week.

“We were never going to film scenes of Andrew going to this restaurant he went to with George or whatever. It wasn't a trip down memory lane. It wasn't that kind of film.

“But he became interested in the idea of doing it because he wanted to understand the legacy and the [tour’s] impact. And the only real way to understand that was to come with us.” Christie describes that impact as “staggering”. He says: “I think we all felt amazed by the way the legacy unfolded. We'd done research calls, so we knew that there was a positive story to tell. But we didn't expect it to climb to the kind of dizzy heights it did. It was an extraordinary revelation.”

The tour was originally designed for capitalist reasons – some irony given the communist location. At the time Wham! were trying to break America, which involved extensive touring across the vast country. They had enjoyed US chart topping success with Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Michael’s solo single Careless Whisper but they needed an extra push to stay at the top.

There was just one problem: Michael was suffering from undiagnosed vocal cord polyps, so a lengthy US tour was out of the question (he later underwent successful surgery in 1988 to remove a cyst from his vocal chords). Step forward Simon Napier-Bell, the band’s manager, who devised an ingenious publicity scheme for the Western duo to play two concerts in China thereby guaranteeing global headlines including in America.

But the stories were far from positive. One major issue was film director Lindsay Anderson, then 61, a leading figure in the Free Cinema who was hired to make a documentary about the trip despite his lack of interest in Wham!.

Things got off to a bad start. Ridgeley immediately disliked Anderson, believing it was “bloody ridiculous” that an auteur known for his cinematic work, with no interest in pop music, would do the film justice. With his lens focused on Chinese society, rather than Wham! before long Anderson was sacked and the original documentary was aborted.

Some of that original footage that has been reconstructed on screen in Christie’s film. In it Ridgeley’s disdain for the tour and the press, who followed the band around, are impossible to mask.

In the singer’s defence he had fallen under a huge amount of media scrutiny, with the paparazzi portraying him as a playboy and party animal. But it’s safe to say he was not seen at his best with his frustration visibly on show. In one scene, he walks out of a press conference after taking offence to questions from journalists.

Christie today insists the now 63-year-old Ridgeley was adamant that this footage remain left in his documentary.

“I was a bit nervous because when we did the first cut, I remember thinking, ‘Do I need to warn Andrew that, by his own admission, he doesn't think he was particularly well behaved at times? Do I need to warn him that actually comes across as having a bit of an attitude’.

“[But] he watched it and said, ‘I'm completely comfortable with it. The most important thing is that the film is authentic. Would I behave the same way now? No. Did I feel that way then? Yes. It stays!’:

Christie says he was impressed that both Ridgeley and Michael’s estate made no moves to “sanitise” the film. “To give them their dues when they saw cuts, they fought to keep some of the more uncomfortable moments in because they wanted it to be authentic,” he adds.

The result is a warts-and-all account of the 1985 tour utilising scenes from Anderson’s 77-minute shelved documentary titled If You Were There and never-before-seen footage.

Christie started work on the documentary in 2024, after discovering scores of cans with the original reels of Super 16 film. Some of it had been recut already. Following Anderson’s firing, Wham! hired music video director Andy Moraham to refashion his footage on everyday Chinese society into a promotional fan film focused on the band. His edited film, Wham! in China: Foreign Skies, was released in 1986 and was shown to 72,000 Wham! Fans at their final concert at Wembley Stadium in June of that year.

Still, Christie admits he had no idea what original footage remained when he set out to locate it. “When we first proposed the film, we thought we might be making it from Foreign Skies, plus the unused, unseen cut by Lindsey Anderson of his documentary, which was ultimately the one that got him fired,” he says.

“But once we began to get the film cans into the post house there was this huge long list. No one knew what was in them – they had been in storage, and no one had looked. There was over 20 hours of new material.” He breaks into a smile, chuffed at the memory. “So we were able to make a completely new film from there.” Christie’s film certainly makes for a riveting and compelling watch.

“We came in knowing there were five layers of narrative,” he continues. “There was China, which was obviously a major thing for us – we felt that story hadn't been given its time. Then there was the music story, the press story, the [failed] documentary story, and George and Andrew's personal relationship,” says Christie.

The latter is what truly surprised him. “We could see this amazing bond between George and Andrew,” he says. “These were two guys who'd known each other since they were 10 or 11. And I was really pleasantly surprised how that chemistry came across.

“You see it in the body language and the honesty and their closeness, and I think that's a great thing. I think we have a lot to thank Andrew for within the [later] career and appreciation of George Michael.”

Michael died in 2016 so the new film will undoubtedly be a boon for his fans. And there are tantalising insights into pop stardom in all its messy beauty. In one intimate moment, Ridgeley and Michael bicker about a speech they have to write for a banquet attended by Chinese officials while travelling in the back of a car.

Christie, who admits he was “relatively neutral about Wham” beforehand (although his sister was “an avid fan”), developed a new appreciation for the group.

“I was staggered by the quality of the live performances. I didn't expect a 12-piece band with that level of musicianship,” he admits. “It's very easy to look back on Wham! and think, ‘Oh, they were a pop band, they were a boy band’. But I've worked in music throughout my whole life, and I was genuinely and very happily surprised by the quality of those performances and those musicians.”

While Michael’s and Ridgeley’s talent and verve are never in dispute, the film’s most jarring scenes are the cuts to the immobile crowds. Chinese authorities strictly banned the audience from standing or dancing – something that was surely difficult given Wham!’s infectious pop tunes – so individuals react to each song by clapping politely in their seats. Indeed at one point the footage shows an audience member being dragged out of the arena for attempting to dance during the performance. It is both disturbing and a fascinating reflection on the oppressive Chinese culture of the time.

In another unrelated shocking incident, one of the backing musicians suffered a severe mental breakdown on a flight to their second show. He stabbed himself in the stomach and forced his way into the aircraft's cockpit, causing the plane to briefly plummet. Neither Michael nor Ridgeley were on the flight but the incident overshadowed the amazing gigs.

But what of the band’s cultural impact on China? Any negative moments aside, Wham’s 10 day visit influenced many people who had the privilege of being able to get tickets to the shows – and that may be its lasting legacy today.

One man, Cui Jian, speaks in the documentary about quitting his job to dedicate himself to music the day after the concert. “He is now the equivalent of Bruce Springsteen in China,” Christie says. “He's the godfather of Chinese rock. That's what he's known as. So this is part of the incredible impact of the tour.

“I don't think we expected the level of cultural transformation that those guys could speak to.”