Andrew Ridgeley Bottles Wham! Reunion

2006 has seen a lot of trends. If you’re a celebrity, for example, you're no-one unless you’ve got an adopted child to your name, and in the music world this year has seen the reunion of a few great big shiny pop bands.

Even though this year is nearly over, another band forgotten in time - Wham! - were set to make their big comeback. Even though Wham! had a few decent songs that now usually only tend to get rolled out at Christmas, weddings or at dodgy mobile discos, that was plenty good enough for George Michael to try and cash-in during a rare break from hanging around in bushes, getting high off cannabis and sleeping slumped at the wheel of his car. But anyway, Wham! aren't reforming any more.

Take That started the whole reuniting trend so all their 19 and 20-year-old fans could reminisce about their childhood, sing along to all their favourite crap songs and buy overpriced tickets to go see their heroes for an hour or two before the band bolted backstage to count all the pennies they’d made. If that wasn’t bad enough, a whole new wave of fans with no musical sense have been exposed to Take That ensuring that they briefly gain more success until the novelty wears off and they fade in to obscurity again. Give them a few months. East 17 reunited for a one-off gig sometime this year, too, and All Saints made a rubbish return with an album that was best left in the pile marked Must Try Harder.

One more band was going to attempt this years long list of bands cashing in on reuniting, and that was Wham! Minus George Michael, nobody really knew who else was in the band. Kind of like Coldplay really. But George Michael obviously felt that he needed his former bandmate alongside him to give Wham! fans (if there’s any left) the proper experience like the good old times. Even though George Michael is perfectly capable of properly pulling off a half-arsed attempt at signing about some club, he might have looked a bit daft if he was just on his own. Maybe if he was down the local pub it would be OK, but not in front of thousands of people. A Wham! reunion was called for.

The last Wham! gig was performed at Wembley Stadium, so what a fitting excuse to get Wham! back together at Wembley, um, arena on Christmas Eve. See what George's thinking was? After apparently pleading for Andrew Ridgeley – apparently the other half of Wham! - to come and sing the hits as part of his world tour, a source revealed that he didn’t want to play because: 

"Andrew was so sick with nerves at the thought of appearing on stage after all these years that he backed out." 

What? You mean, singing for the first time in god knows how long in front of a crowd who didn’t pay to see you scared you? Bah! We laugh in the face of nervousness here at hecklerspray. There’s nothing more then we like then potentially making complete fools of ourselves. Still his loss, we’re sure that mass media attention and the probable re-release of crap Wham! songs wouldn’t have hurt him financially. Personally, yes - but not financially.

Read more:

Wham! Reunion Scuppered By Ridgeley Nerves - Digitalspy