News Andrew Ridgeley News

[George Michael]

Dusk outside The Regal cinema in the Cornish village of Wadebridge, and a couple in their early 40s are buying tickets to see the Oscar-nominated film The Queen.

Both are vaguely familiar in appearance, but dressed down in jeans and warm coats they easily blend in with the early evening crowd outside the ticket booth.

Later, they emerge arm in arm and drive to their local pub for a pint of Oakham Ale (a particular favourite), before making the short journey home to their large, comfortable farmhouse with its menagerie of dogs, cats and sheep.

It is a snapshot of a nice, low-key sort of life - one that 44-year-old Andrew Ridgeley and his long-term girlfriend Keren Woodward thoroughly enjoy.

Indeed, since decamping from the capital to live here 12 years ago, Ridgeley, one half of the phenomenally successful Eighties pop duo Wham!, has told friends he has never been happier.

He prizes the anonymity he has found here in this picturesque spot on the North Cornwall coast.

That all looks set to change in the coming months, however.

In London's showbusiness circles, the word is that Ridgeley is to emerge from rural hibernation for a series of one-off gigs this summer alongside former bandmate George Michael at the newly-completed Wembley Stadium (rumours further fuelled this week by newspaper adverts for the concert proclaiming the appearance of a 'Very Special Guest').

The deal is said to have been signed early in the new year, when Ridgeley agreed to make a guest appearance at the show to sing on one of Michael's most enduring hits, Careless Whisper.

If he does, it will be the first time the pair have sung together since their barnstorming farewell gig in front of tens of thousands of wailing fans at the same venue in 1986.

Perhaps more pertinently for Andrew, it will be the first time he has performed in public at all since then.

Little wonder there has been much soul- searching in front of the log fires down on his farm.

As a friend said: "Andrew still doesn't know whether he's doing the right thing. He has no desire to be famous again or place himself in the spotlight.

"But George really, really wanted him to do it. It's 21 years on, and he thought: 'OK, what the hell, just this once.' He has been pestered by requests for years and I think he hopes that if he does this one-off it will put an end to it." It is, of course, rather difficult to connect this now most reluctant of pop stars with the man who used to strut around on stage with a shuttlecock down his tight white shorts.

Parodied by the satirical show Spitting Image as a pair of dancing buttocks, Ridgeley was seen as the embodiment of 1980s hedonistic excess, a dedicated lothario whose success with women far outshone his talent as a musician.

Certainly, he struggled to find his mark after the demise of Wham!. Despite amassing a £10 million fortune from sales and royalties, he is still seen as the 'failure' of the band, unable to find solo success - or indeed any form of success - of his own.

He released one album, Son Of Albert, which featured his younger brother Paul on drums, and George Michael on the backing vocals of one song. But it did not even make the top 75, was panned by critics and quietly, without fanfare, Sony passed on the option of making a second album.

Instead, with money and time to kill, Ridgeley moved in the late Eighties to the millionaires' playground of Monaco, taking up Formula 3 racing and indulging in his twin passions of women and fast cars.

He was, it must be said, rather better at the former than the latter. Two years later, he had given up hope of being a racing driver and returned to Britain, dejected.

His story could, one imagines, so easily have turned into another depressingly familiar tale of the washed-up pop star who turns to drink and drugs.

Instead, salvation came in the form of Keren Woodward, now 44, the former Bananarama singer with whom he now shares his bucolic existence.

The couple first met through George Michael in the mid-Eighties.

Keren had been set up on a blind date with Michael, one which unsurprisingly - given what we now know about his sexual orientation - did not amount to much, although they remained friends.

Later, a friendship with Ridgeley blossomed into romance and, in November 1994, together with Keren's then six-year- old son Thomas from a previous relationship, the couple made the decision to sell up and relocate to Cornwall, where they had holidayed together on several occasions.

Keren's friends - and many of Andrew's - thought they were 'mad' and warned them against it.

Nonetheless, home ever since has been a comfortable, sprawling, dusky-pink farmhouse tucked away down winding country lanes behind the village of Wadebridge.

Excited dogs run around the garden, and sheep graze in the fields sloping from the spacious gardens. According to villagers, the couple's next goal is the acquisition of pigs.

Unlike other 'retired' pop stars before him, however, Ridgeley is keen not to be seen as playing the country squire. On the contrary, he strives for the ordinary.

Most weeks he can be seen running errands on Wadebridge's main street, and is a regular at both the local pastie shop and the Co-op. These days, however, it would be hard to recognise him from his floppy-haired heyday.

While he retains his lithe figure and deep 'Club Tropicana' tan, his hair - or what there is left of it - is completely grey, and shaved. With his hooded brown eyes and high cheekbones, he has apparently been given the nickname 'Osama Bin Laden' by his golfing buddies.

As is the average middle-aged man's wont, golf takes up a lot of Ridgeley's time these days, but it was surfing that first brought him to Cornwall, and when the surf is up, he can still be found with his board chasing the waves around Constantine Bay.

He's rather good at it and still manages to blend in easily with the surfie crowd, many of whom are too young to remember him from his pop star days.

As one told the Mail: "Occasionally if he falls off, he gets someone shouting 'Wham! Bam! I am a man!' but less and less as every year goes by. The thing about surfing is that it's a great leveller. Everyone just wants to crack open a beer and talk about the waves - and Andy's as up for that as anyone."

Certainly, any fears on the part of the retired pop star that he would be shunned by the locals - and he confided worries about this to friends - seem to have been misplaced.

Indeed, the community appear rather touchingly protective of their once famous resident. If you ask for directions to Ridgeley Towers, you are likely to be told that the couple have moved.

A regular at the Quarryman Inn, one of Ridgeley's favourite drinking holes, said: "Andrew doesn't play the celebrity card in any way and never has. He has never opened a fete, or done the big I Am, or drawn attention to himself. He is just one of the locals and so we try to respect his privacy." So, real ale, sheep, golf, surfing, and Cornish pasties: all a far cry from the world inhabited by Andrew Ridgeley's former bandmate, it must be said.

While by far the more financially successful of the partnership - George Michael's solo album sales worldwide now exceed 30 million and he is a multi-millionaire - the singer has not enjoyed quite the same success in his private life. In fact, latterly, George has lurched from one embarrassing episode to another.

First there was the infamous 1998 arrest when he was found by a policeman 'engaging in a lewd act' in a Beverly Hills public lavatory.

There was a public spat in 2004 with Elton John after the singer said in an interview that Michael seemed to be "in a strange place" and had "deep-seated unhappiness in his life".

Then, early last year, Michael was arrested and cautioned on drugs charges after being found slumped at the wheel of his Mercedes in Central London - an incident which was followed six months later by his arrest on charges of being unfit to drive through drugs. That case is still ongoing.

A certain disparity of lifestyles then, which might lead you to assume that the two former bandmates are no longer in contact. Far from it.

They remain close friends who talk regularly on the phone. Occasionally locals will hear the whirring blades of George's private helicopter as it lands on the fields of the farm to see his old pal.

The last time, the Mail understands, was shortly before Christmas, when he came to discuss the possibility of a Wham! reunion.

On this occasion, George had hoped his former partner would join him on stage during a series of concerts at Wembley Arena in December, an offer Ridgeley almost accepted, pulling out at the last minute, citing nerves.

This time around, it seems, things are different, with Andrew finally bowing to pressure and agreeing to take part in what he has apparently stated firmly is a 'final, final fling.'

The decision, given his apparent horror of raising his head above the parapet, does seem an odd one. After all, he has not been short of new opportunities to hog the limelight again, wooed over the years by just about every television reality show going.

According to Keren, he briefly expressed an interest in Strictly Come Dancing, a show for which he has a particular fondness and which he saw as offering a challenge.

Even that, however, was not enough to lure him away from the farm. "I can't throw myself back in there," he told her. "Not after I've spent all this time being anonymous." Could it be, then, that there are financial reasons behind the decision? After all, popular legend has it that Ridgeley squandered much of his fortune in the late Eighties on alcohol, women and motor racing, while an ill-feted bar in Rickmansworth, Herts, called 92, did not last.

In fact, it seems he and Keren - who herself made millions from her time in Bananarama and who has continued touring on and off - are "more than comfortably off". The farmhouse is paid for and the two do not live expensively.

Perhaps, then, it is a touch of nostalgia, or as a friend of his explained, a touch of "what the hell".

Maybe it is merely the desire to put a smile on the face of his old friend.

Certainly, Ridgley's father Albert, a dapper man who bears a striking resemblance to his son and who lives just a couple of miles away in his own comfortable home in Wadebridge, was unwilling to shed any light on the matter this week.

"I don't feel I should," he explained. "The thing is, he's rather shy. He came down here to get away from it all." As we have seen, he has certainly managed that, until now.

Perhaps it is only fitting then that this week, as speculation about the possibility of a reunion reaches fever pitch, "shy" Andrew is out of the country, participating in a golfing tournament in the U.S.

That said, he has shown quite well how he is able to hide himself away in this little corner of the UK.

Ridgeley has, of course, traditionally been portrayed as the loser in the Wham! legacy.

But as he contemplates his return to the limelight from within the relatively modest comfort of his Cornish farmhouse it is hard not to sense who has proved, long term, to be the real winner.