Ex-bandmate Andrew’s grief

WHAM!’S Andrew Ridgeley has told how he fell to his knees and “cried like never before” when ex-bandmate George Michael died.

The star said nothing had prepared him for losing his pal.

Andrew, 54, said yesterday: “That night, after I had phoned our friends to convey the dreadful news – and despite having shed an ocean of tears already that day – the sheer eviscerating sense of loss cut my legs from beneath me and, on the deck and on my knees, I cried like I had never cried before.

“Nothing had prepared me for the depth of pain George’s death precipitated.”

The pair became pals at school in Hertfordshire in the 1970s. They went on to have hits including Last Christmas.

George died of heart and liver disease on Christmas Day last year. He was 53.

Andrew said he had sent a message “wishing him a wonderful Christmas” minutes before learning of George’s death.

He added: “I had lost my parents in recent years and yet this was entirely different, a loss I had not contemplated.

“I had somehow lost sight of quite what my childhood best friend meant to me.”

Andrew hopes to get Last Christmas to No1 this year as “the most fitting tribute to my dearest friend of all”.

Its highest chart position was No2, in 1985.