George Michael modelled himself on Andrew Ridgeley, biographer reveals

POP superstar George Michael modelled his look by copying bandmate Andrew Ridgeley, his biographer has revealed.

James Gavin also said he silently gave away millions to people and organisations in need at a time where he could not bear to look at himself in a mirror.

He told GB News: “He felt that he was awkward. He knew that he was talented and by the age of seven he had set his sights, not on becoming a musician, but on becoming a superstar and he made it there.

“He knew he had the talent, but he had to have the image and he created first of all with Wham! and Andrew Ridgeley.

“He saw in Andrew, who was a schoolmate of his, a template for what he wanted to be. Cool, confident, self assured looking great, knew how to put a look together.

“Andrew Ridgeley became the model for what George Michael became in Wham! And then George left Wham! after the group had conquered the world.

“Two years later he was on arena stages all over the world as this George Michael doll, this super macho biker dude that he knew was a lie and as he stood on these stages everywhere, he felt like a major fraud really.“

Speaking during an interview during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, Mr Gavin said that living a lie made George unhappy.

“George said in his many words that during this phenomenally successful tour, which was the number one grossing tour in the world in 1988, that he was miserable,” he said.

“It’s interesting that he spent the first half of his life creating George Michael and the second half of his life destroying George Michael.”

Mr Gavin, the author of “George Michael: A Life”, said he outed himself as gay “subconsciously” in 1998.

He said: “I would say he came out in April of 1998 in that incident that everyone knows, in which he was arrested after having stepped out of a men’s room in Beverly Hills.

“He didn’t come out, he didn’t make the decision consciously to come out, he made it subconsciously to come out.

“He was terrified for all sorts of reasons. The 90s were a very different time. George, first of all, had created this worldwide success that he thought might be seriously endangered if he told the truth, his audience up until that time were screaming girls.”

He said George was embarrassed by his Greek Cypriot background and spiralled out of control emotionally when his mother died of cancer.

George turned to drugs after the death from AIDS of his first great love Anselmo Feleppa: “Drugs entered his life in the mid 90s after he had lost the love of his life.

“This beautiful Brazilian man named Anselmo Feleppa who had died of AIDS a year and a half after they met and then four years later his mother, beloved mother, died prematurely of cancer.

“That was 1997 and George at that point felt that he had lost the two bedrocks of his life.”

He added: “What surprised me is the depths to which this beautiful, physically beautiful, universally loved, wealthy superstar could not bear to see what he saw in the mirror.

“It’s quite sad and again it harked back to his childhood because that’s how he felt when he was growing up and he never got over that.”

Mr Gavin said another surprising find during his research was how George gave away millions to help people in need.

“I discovered so much about the humanity of this guy. This guy was in trouble. He was suffering and when we look upon someone who is that eminent and that wealthy, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for what’s going on underneath,” he said.

“But George was in a lot of pain, a lot of conflict and one of the ways that he expressed his big heart was philanthropy.

“As you know he was, he gave away millions of pounds to friends in need to strangers in need to organisations that he cared about.

“And he did it silently. He wasn’t doing it to take bows.”