So far the death of Michael Jackson has given a lot to his fans – but what if you’re a fan of giant anticlimaxes?

Don’t worry – Michael Jackson has you covered, too. Because the custody battle over Michael Jackson’s kids, which looked certain to be a scrap between Katherine Jackson, Debbie Rowe, the children’s biological parents and Diana Flipping Ross, is over. From now on, those kids belong to Katherine Jackson.

The children must be thrilled – because nobody’s more like Michael Jackson than Katherine Jackson. Apart from a half-melted waxwork figurine of a Munch painting, obviously, but that’d just be impractical.

As ridiculous as the (literally) brainless death of Michael Jackson and all the ensuing hoopla was, it’s important to remember that there are children involved.

No, not like that you pervert. We mean Michael Jackson’s actual kids. Or the kids that Michael Jackson claimed were his, at least. Christ, this is confusing. Anyway, this last last month must have been unbearable for Michael’s three children. They’ve lost their father, they’ve been forced to cry on global television by Janet Jackson and – worst of all – they’ve realised that nobody really wants them.

The custody battle for Michael Jackson kids was supposed to be epic – Katherine Jackson was supposed to want them, Debbie Rowe was supposed to want them, Diana Ross was supposed to want them, their own biological parents might have wanted them – but none of that happened. Diana Ross went quiet, the real parents never turned up and Debbie Rowe told the whole world that she didn’t want anything to do with them. That left 79-year-old Katherine Jackson, who got custody of the kids yesterday, more or less by default. Time reports:

Michael Jackson’s brood will indeed be growing up Jackson, but not without the occasional visit from a familiar face. Debbie Rowe will officially return to the lives of her two birth children, according to a joint statement between Rowe’s and Katherine Jackson’s attorney, released early Thursday.

Good. The children have been through a horrific upheaval, so it’s heartening to know that they’ll spend the rest of their lives being looked after by their grandmother. Well, not the rest of their lives, obviously. The woman’s almost 80, for crying out loud. At best she’s probably only got the strength to raise them for another five years or so, at which point they’ll have to go through this whole harrowing procedure again.

But, still, it’s nice that Debbie Rowe has agreed to visit the children from time to time, so at least their constant morbid fear that they’ll witness the deaths of two of their guardians within the space of a couple of years will be punctuated by the awkwardness of occasional semi-formal appointments with the woman who famously sold away her parental rights for cash while Michael Jackson was still alive. That’s something, right?

But, hey, on the plus side that new Jackson Three album is going to be pretty kickass.

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If anyone has a spare medal lying around, would they mind posting it to Debbie Rowe? That woman is a hero.

Why? Because she’s achieved the impossible. Debbie Rowe has taken the already-complex Michael Jackson custody case and made it so astoundingly convoluted that it’d literally take an army of rocket scientists 4,000 years to properly understand it. Although it’s widely expected that she’ll fight for custody of Michael Jackson’s kids, some emails suggest that Debbie Rowe absolutely doesn’t want anything to do with them.

Still, she’s making children feel vulnerable and scared – and that’s what Michael Jackson would have wanted.

Looking at the impending custody brawl over Michael Jackson’s children, it’s hard not to feel a little bit sorry for the kids. It doesn’t matter what the outcome is – their lives are bound to end up worse no matter who gets them. And bear in mind that they grew up living in a spooky dilapidated abandoned fairground with a terrifying ghoul-faced drug addict who enjoyed dangling them from high-rise balconies, so that’s really saying something.

At the moment the kids are being cared for by Michael Jackson’s parents, which would be fine were it not for their demented insistence on forcing the children to become an all-singing, all-dancing revue act. And then, if Michael Jackson gets his way from beyond the grave, the children might end up with Diana Ross – which, again, would be fine were it not for the fact that a) she’s Diana Ross and b) that literally makes no sense whatsoever.

But still, hope is on the horizon, because Debbie Rowe is here, and she looks as if she’s about to throw her hat into the ring. Yes, she might have once given up her right to ever see or speak to the children again in exchange for a big pile of money. And, yes, there’s a particularly strong chance that she isn’t even the biological mother of any of them. But Debbie Rowe loves the children and wants to raise them as best she can in a safe and secure environment. Isn’t that right, New York Daily News?

“Do I want the kids? Hell no! Does it look good for me to ask for them? Absolutely,” [Debbie Rowe] wrote July 5 to friend Rebecca White, ExtraTV.com reported. “I don’t want to look like the woman who gave away her kids.”

Wise move, Debbie Rowe – nobody wants to look like the woman who gave away her kids. It’s much, much better to look like the woman who ended up caring for a bunch of children she has absolutely no interest in whatsoever, and doesn’t even seem to like very much, just because she didn’t want to look like the woman who gave away her kids. You’ve picked the rational choice, Debbie. Anyone in your position would do the same thing.

But let’s not count our chickens straight away – the custody battle has only just begun, so nobody has any idea who the children will end up with. And Uri Geller‘s been keeping a suspiciously low profile of late, hasn’t he?

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He’s died, had his brain lopped off and been sung at by a 12-year-old, but it’s hard to let Michael Jackson go.

But we might not need to. In a way, Michael Jackson will live on forever. Not in his music or the way we’ll always be reminded of his spirit and generosity whenever we catch sight of a rainbow – that’d be creepy – but in the way that the custody battle over children is never ever going to ever end. Ever.

Especially not now that Debbie Rowe has decided to get involved. Seriously, where’s Jeremy Kyle when you need him?

Michael Jackson hasn’t even been dead for a month yet, but already the tussle over his children is starting to spiral out of control. This is partly Michael Jackson’s fault – it’s becoming clear that, genetically speaking, he had zero in common with any of them and his entire paternal process seemed to involve dangling a number of them from balconies and keeping all the ones ones that didn’t slip out of his hands – but he’s not the only character involved in this mess. The others are:

1 – Katherine Jackson, Michael Jackson’s 79-year-old mother who is temporarily caring for the children.

2 – Diana Ross, the woman who Michael Jackson inexplicably chose to care for his kids in the event of his death, even though she can’t even kick a football properly.

3 – Dr Arnold Klein, the man who might be the father of Michael Jackson’s children but probably isn’t. But he might be. But he probably isn’t. Maybe.

4 – Everyone else on Earth, because at this rate it’s only a matter of time before we all end up getting named as the mother or father of at least one of Michael Jackson’s kids.

And then there’s Debbie Rowe, the woman who married Michael Jackson and then gave birth to either one, two or none of his children, but decided six years ago that she’d rather have a crapload of money than any contact with any of them whatsoever. Rowe’s been keeping herself to herself since Michael Jackson died, but that’s all going to change next week – she’s decided that she’s going to rock up to the custody hearing. People reports:

Now that a hearing has been scheduled at Los Angeles Superior Court on July 20 for temporary guardianship of the children, Rowe plans to be seen. “[Debbie] says that she will definitely be at the custody hearing,” says Marc Schaffel, a former business partner of Jackson’s and a close friend of Rowe’s.

Brilliant. This can only be good for the kids. After all, in times of crisis children need their mothers most of all. Even when their mothers have already accepted a large payment to never see or speak to any of them ever again. And statistically are fairly unlikely to be the biological mother of any of them. And seem a bit weird and creepy most of the time.

Yes, Debbie Rowe is exactly what those children need. This custody battle is going to be fun.

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When Michael Jackson died, it was generally feared that he’d leave an Anna Nicole Smith-style mess in his wake.

Luckily that hasn’t happened. Michael Jackson lived his life free of Anna Nicole-style controversy, there’s been no Anna Nicole-style mystery behind Michael Jackson’s death and there won’t be an Anna Nicole-style custody battle over Michael Jackson’s kids because they’re definitely his. We’re sure you’ll agree that’s a giant relief.

Wait a minute, Michael Jackson’s life was controversial, his death is a mystery and there’s likely to be the custody fight of the century over his children? Oh thank God for that.

So far the most depressing thing about Michael Jackson’s death has either been the fact that it happened at all, the way that radio stations won’t stop playing Billie Jean a full five days after he died or the tragic lack of any homemade tapestries depicting Michael Jackson as Jesus on the cross being put up for sale on eBay.

But those three things can expect to be blown out of the water any day now, because the world has just remembered that Michael Jackson had three kids and nobody seems particularly sure who they belong to any more. And, credit to Michael Jackson and his estate, that isn’t just depressing news – that’s an award-winning, gold-standard epic level of unbearably depressing news.

At the moment Michael Jackson’s three children – Michael Jr, Paris and Prince Michael – are living with Michael’s mother Katherine Jackson after a court awarded her temporary guardianship yesterday.

That in itself is good news for all manner of reasons – a) in this time of unthinkable loss, the children will fare better in familiar, stable surroundings, b) If the children want to be with someone who looks like Michael Jackson, their best bet is to hang out with a 79-year-old woman, and c) Katherine Jackson brought Michael Jackson up and he turned out OK, didn’t he? – but don’t expect this peace to last for much longer.

And that’s because at lease two of Michael Jackson’s children have a mother, and there’s a very good chance that she’ll start fighting for custody any day now. Technically Michael Jackson’s ex-wife Debbie Rowe signed away all her parental rights to the children in 2006, but that’s probably not going to stop her from having another crack at it now that he’s dead, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

“Deborah Rowe has a biological link and is in a better position than the grandparents,” said Marshall Waller, a certified family-law specialist who practices in Beverly Hills. “The law tends to favor placing the children in the custody of the biological parent. … If she steps up, they would go to her unless the court determines that her guardianship would be harmful to the children.”

So, in summary, Michael Jackson’s kids are either going to end up living with the mother who ditched them for cash three years ago or the grandmother who forced their father into showbusiness as a child to his obvious mental and physical detriment. And that’s just the two oldest kids – nobody even knows who the mother or father of Prince Michael are, so that’s only going to complicate things even further.

But just because his life was a mess, his death is a mess and nobody really knows who his children belong to any more, it’d be wrong to compare Michael Jackson to Anna Nicole Smith. For example, Michael Jackson never married an almost-dead oil billionaire for money. Other than that though, yeah, the comparison sort of stands.

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