Saas-Fee celebrates 40 years of Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’

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A karaoke booth has been set up by the main bus stop, but it only plays one song. Shoulder pads have been fished out of drawers. Hairspray is on standby. The Swiss ski resort of Saas-Fee is ready to party like it’s 1984.

It’s 40 years since English pop stars George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley – aka Wham! – arrived in Saas-Fee, a village of 1,600 people in the canton of Valais, to make a last-minute video for Last Christmas. It’s the wintry anthem that, every December, pumps out of radio stations from Toronto to Tokyo, with nearly two billion downloads on streaming service Spotify and more than 900 million views on YouTube. Even if you don’t know all the lyrics, you’ve probably hummed it. And Saas-Fee is certainly not letting the global public relations opportunity pass it by.

This December, visitors who come to schuss down its 150km of pistes will also discover guided Wham! walks, Wham! cocktails, Wham! parties and, in the town’s museum, alongside 19th-century weaving looms, beds, dresses and ice axes, a new exhibition on the pop group’s stay in the Swiss Alps four decades ago. Though the song was recorded in August, the video (which George, who died in 2016, apparently conceived as a “Christmas-themed version of Club Tropicana”) was a rushed job, shot in late November, when snow was already on the ground. The single was released on December 3, only a fortnight later.

When I arrived late last month, this winter’s first big snowfall had fallen overnight and was whipping off the roof of Nesti’s Ski Bar, where a sign promised “beer as cold as your ex’s heart”. The village is surrounded by mountains, 17 of which top 4,000 metres, and, with thick flakes coming down all around, it seemed more of a steaming mug of Glühwein kind of day.

In the museum over the road, Mattia Storni, head of marketing for the resort, showed me the finishing touches being made to the Wham! exhibition. “The interest in this gets bigger and bigger every year,” he told me. “The song is an amazing ambassador – we have people coming from as far as Australia just because of our link to Andrew and George.”

+ Andrew Ridgeley back in Swiss Alps for BBC’s ‘Last Christmas’ documentary

Bemused skiers

My guide on my afternoon Wham! walk was Iwan Bitschin, who had lived under the bright lights of Zurich and London but decided recently to return to the mountains where his parents own a restaurant. On the hike, I declined the offer of an 80s-style wig, preferring my unflattering yet functional woolly hat.

We headed uphill through the fresh snow to the Felskinn cable car, which normally whisks guests up to the start of the world’s highest funicular railway, which in turn ends 3,457 metres above sea level at the Allalin, the world’s highest revolving restaurant.

Gusty winds scuppered our plans to reach the summit. Instead we stayed at the base and watched the Last Christmas video on my phone, pinpointing where the pop gang drove up in their 4x4s – special permission had to be sought in the electric-vehicle-only resort – and clambered into the cable car. In reality, they only travelled 50 metres before coming back down again, while regular skiers were kept back, somewhat bemused.

In another part of the village we peered through the windows of a rather austere conference centre, which was used in the video for interior shots around a blazing log fire. And on the outskirts of the town we trod gingerly along icy Schliechtenweg to see, from a respectful distance, the exterior of the chalet where George and friends yomped through the deep snow, much as we were doing. It looked almost the same 40 years later, if you ignored the other accommodation that had grown up around it.

Suite 2501

At the Walliserhof hotel, where the group and crew were based for the shoot, guests can download an augmented-reality game on to their phones and be led through a series of clues to suite 2501, where George stayed, and which is now festooned with photos of the star, as well as Wham! books and CDs. (A celebratory two-night Wham!-themed package is available to book.) Downstairs I sipped a vodka and watermelon Wham! cocktail. “Was this George’s favourite?” I asked the young bartender. “I think so,” she replied, somewhat unconvincingly.

I enjoyed it in the company of the hotel’s former owner, Beat Anthamatten, who was responsible for the video being shot here. “A location scout contacted me because the crew of the movie The Razor’s Edge, which included actor Bill Murray, had been shooting mountain scenes in India. But they all got food poisoning and needed to recreate the same look in Europe. They chose Saas-Fee. A month later I got another call from him, this time about an English pop group wanting to shoot a Christmas-themed video. They were going to Gstaad but the snow wasn’t great, and could we accommodate them here? Of course, I said yes.” The rest is pop history.

Forty years later, fans will descend on Saas-Fee to raise a glass and a ski pole to the most festive of Christmas songs, which will probably still be blasting from shopping-mall speakers long after the Fee Glacier has melted away.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024