The World

Alas poor Michael Jackson, I didn’t know him particularly well. In fact, I didn’t know him at all. I did, however, play a walk-on part in the media frenzy that surrounded him as his life became increasingly bizarre.

Jackson was in Bangkok in 1993 when the first allegations that he had an unhealthy interest in children were made. I was living there and together with my wife, who was working as a freelancer for the BBC, made my way down to the Oriental Hotel to see if we could put the allegations to Jacko directly. The whole place was, of course, a circus – the Oriental was surrounded by singing fans and the lobby was stuffed with security men. Jackson was on the top floor – but the lifts weren’t stopping there. But somehow we found out the room number of a member of his management team, who was on the tenth floor.

We went up there and rapped smartly on his door. The man from the Jackson team opened the door – behind him in the room, we could see some young Thai men who he seemed to be entertaining. As soon as we identified ourselves as journalists, he lost his temper – and tried to knock away the microphone that my heavily-preganant wife was waving. There was an unseemly bout of pushing and shoving. Eventually we beat a retreat. Our next move was to try the fire escape to see if we get upto the 12th floor – but that was also blocked by security men. So eventually we went outside the hotel and vox-popped fans on whether they believed the allegations. As far as I recall, all the British fans thought they were definitely true and all the Thais thought they were scurrilous lies.

Anyway, I’m sorry to lower the tone on the day of the poor man’s death. I don’t think he was up there with John Lennon or Elvis – but maybe he makes the Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix league, when it comes to the untimely deaths of pop icons.