Careless whispers: what really happened between George Michael and Lindsay Anderson? The Wham! movie producer reveals all

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How did the pioneering director get involved – then fall out – with the 80s’ poppiest band? How are Sam Peckinpah and Michael Jackson’s Thriller involved? Prepare for a tale of ambition, deception and shuttlecock-stuffed shorts When Wham! squashed Lindsay Anderson’s China film Andrew Ridgeley on Wham’s surreal trip to China It was the evening of 3 April 1985 in a hotel in Hong Kong. Lindsay Anderson, who I’d engaged to direct the theatrical documentary I’d instigated of Wham!’s historic trip to China, had called a meeting of the film crew. He wanted to give a pep talk the night before we flew to Beijing. The 30-strong team my production company had recruited for this adventure duly assembled. Lindsay gave a speech in the stentorian tones of an elder statesman addressing the House of Commons and rooted in Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day oration. And typical Lindsay, he mixed shrewd observation with sardonic wit. “Tomorrow we embark on a great adventure,” he said. “We travel into communist Ch...
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My Fairy Troublemaker review – sweet-tooth animation will be gobbled up by young ’uns

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Story of a misbehaving sprite who gets access to the human world, and a fellow rebel, looks good but the story is a little flat

This German-Luxembourgian animation is a passable if unambitious hour and a half for under-10s, heavily in the orbit of Pixar both in terms of visuals and in its central conceit of the business of tooth-fairying as a Deliveroo-esque big-tech courier outfit. But unlike Inside Out and Soul’s pint-sized explainers of the psyche, there’s virtually no philosophical sprinkling on the cupcake here. Not that that will stop the young ’uns from gobbling it up anyway – but they might have enjoyed something more nutritious.

The exam to become a fully accredited tooth fairy seems easy enough. As the would-be disco earworm at the start of My Fairy Troublemaker has it, “Sneak inside, take the tooth, make the toy, and disappear!” Cookie-scoffing, misbehaving Violetta (voiced by Jella Haase) is the only apprentice who fails to make the grade, unlike her swotty mate Yolando (Julian Mau). Stuck in her belief that she’s really “the most special tooth fairy ever”, she steals a gem that allows her access to the human world. But in hijacking Yolando’s assignment to obtain an incisor from city kid Sami (John Chadwick), she finds an ally in his older stepsister Maxie (Lisa-Marie Koroll) when she is trapped in our reality.

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