It was a witty remark by the standards of late-night radio talk shows. “Gordon Brown has turned out to be the Andrew Ridgeley of new Labour,” groaned the caller. But it riled me nonetheless. Not because I think that our PM is doing a fabulous job, but because I reject vehemently, and a little perversely perhaps, the idea that Andrew Ridgeley is a failure.

“Perversely” because there's no denying that the former Wham! star has been a byword for talentlessness for decades. J-Lo's decision to appear on the same concert billing as her husband, Marc Anthony, was recently described in the press as “the greatest mismatch of creative talents since Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael”. Matt Stone has been described as the Andrew Ridgeley of the duo behind South Park. And David Baddiel was once ambushed, somewhat unfairly, on a live TV show, Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, with the question: “Does David feel happy being Andrew Ridgeley to Frank's George Michael?”

But let's consider the facts. First, the man who became famous for, among other things, putting shuttlecocks down his shorts has co-writing credits on some of the biggest hits of the Eighties, including Careless Whisper and Club Tropicana, and has been credited by his former beardy band mate as a driving force behind Wham!. This may, I realise, make him worthy of waterboarding in most people's eyes, but my point is not that helping to compose Wham! Rap is a notable achievement, but that being involved in selling more than 38 million records is not exactly a crashing failure.

Secondly - and rarely for a member of a pop band - Ridgeley had the humility to understand that his role was a junior one (“I realised that my talent was never going to be as prodigious as George's”), as well as the charm to at least enjoy his good fortune, with Simon Napier-Bell, the band's manager, once remarking: “Andrew loved every minute of Wham!, while George was always very introverted.”

Thirdly, Ridgeley's long-term girlfriend is no less than Keren Woodward - the hot one from Bananarama - something many men of a certain age and demographic would consider a major achievement.

Fourthly, he lives a peaceful life with Woodward in Cornwall. Details are patchy, but Ridgeley can apparently often be seen running errands on Wadebridge's main street, is a regular at both the local pasty shop and the Co-op, plays golf and darts, surfs, listens to the shipping forecast, enjoys real ale and is involved with a local ecological charity.

And if this isn't enough to make you want to get some highlights, dig out a copy of Young Guns (Go For It!) and perform that peculiar side-to-side dance that he exhibited a little too often on Top of the Pops, there's the fact that, unlike most of his contemporaries, Ridgeley has resisted the temptation to revisit his fame. He was rumoured to be coming out of rural hibernation to join Michael on stage last year, but reports suggest that he got last-minute nerves and pulled out. And according to his girlfriend - the hot one from Bananarama, remember - he briefly expressed an interest in appearing on Strictly Come Dancing, but didn't follow through with the threat.

Admittedly, this aversion to public appearances might be down to the decades of abuse he has received at the hands of the media, and the fact that he made a packet in the Eighties - the royalties for Careless Whisper alone are rumoured to earn him £10,000 a year. But I'd like to think that it's because the man once parodied on Spitting Image as a pair of dancing buttocks has discovered something that too many modern-day reality TV stars, pop acts and newspaper columnists lack: dignity.

And here's my broader point. Our public life has so deteriorated since the Eighties, our TV screens and magazines have become so populated by talentless non-entities, that “Andrew Ridgeley” is no longer a valid unit by which to measure failure. In a world of Coleen and Posh, Chanelle and Makosi, where you can become a media sensation for remarking on national TV that you think “Portugal is in Spain” or a multimedia brand by simply sporting abnormally large breasts, Ridgeley's achievements seem positively impressive.

Of course, there is one flaw in the argument: namely, Ridgeley's silly behaviour between 1986 and 1991. After Wham! disbanded, he went to Monaco and flirted with Formula Three, but crashed too often, then he moved to Los Angeles, hoping to start a film career, but didn't get anywhere, and then opened a restaurant in the English countryside, which eventually closed.

There's also the small matter of his solo album, Son of Albert. It featured his younger brother, Paul, on drums, appeared in 1990 and inspired the Daily Mail to remark that Ridgeley's voice was “as distinctive as a loaf of bread” and that his songs were “uniformly pitiful” - an assessment that I, having managed to find a copy on eBay, must concede is too generous. The record apparently cost $1 million to produce, an amount that most people would consider paying just to avoid having to endure it. But I have also just flicked through Heat magazine and after reading a cover story on Kerry Katona, a former member of a minor girl group whose claim to fame appears to be a car-crash marriage to a former member of a boy group, I think Ridgeley deserves respect. If anything, our nation should honour his achievements. “Lord Ridgeley of Wadebridge” has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
sathnam@thetimes.co.uk

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