Sickening

I think most people will have been disgusted by the scenes outside a California courtroom, where people were whooping with joy that Michael Jackson's personal doctor, Conrad Murray, had been found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of the singer.

Why the frenzied scenes? Several said that they were glad that 'justice had been done' but this is wide of the mark. Dr. Murray has been convicted of a crime which carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison, and these folk are not outside every courtroom in America celebrating the imprisonment of criminals.

Jackson was a drug addict, with all the grubby associations that holds. Most addicts can't afford to have a doctor present when they shoot up (the chief accusation against Murray was that he administered the drug and then left the room).

These people are fans of Michael Jackson who know he had feet of clay and that it is they who made him like that. They wish Conrad Murray had been found guilty of murder. It would have taken something off their consciences.

The king with no clothes

I suppose it is inevitable that the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor should be televised, but I think it is unfortunate. In the news reports you can sense the prurient voyeurism. You wonder whether the people, his fans, wanted him to live a normal life, wanted him indeed to live, or whether they prefer it this way. It seems to have been the latter but now he is dead there are regrets. Did they have to publish a photo of his corpse? Was this the prurience or a lawyer's trick to shock?

And you can sense the desire for a guilty verdict. People don't want to think of their hero as a weak minded, drug dependent automaton who could be got on stage with the right cocktail. So he must have been killed.

I suppose for many this must be compulsive viewing. For me it is repulsive. Michael Jackson allowed himself to be pushed into an ever more artificial life. He was killed by his fans.

Michael Jackson

I keep a list, which I look at from time to time, of famous people who died at an age I have already passed: Christ, Mozart, Shelley, John F Kennedy etc. It serves both to bolster confidence that things could be worse and to remind one of one’s own ineffectuality.

My first thought about Michael Jackson was that I wasn’t in the least surprised to be writing his name on it. Whereas the deaths of other much older people in the music business – Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, would cause you to stop and think, with Jackson it seems, with hindsight, just obvious.

His many fans must hope that he will be remembered for his music, but it is his life and lifestyle which has too often been the story: the strange pallor, the children, the bankruptcy. Unlike, say, Elvis Presley or David Bowie there was nothing about Jackson’s lifestyle that anyone would have wanted.

And now the stories will run, the unauthorised biographies will be written and the money will flow in and pay off the debts. Hey-ho.