After a parent dies, it can be hard for everyone to get over the fact that they’re no longer around.

For the children of Michael Jackson, life is going to be difficult now that their father is now moonwalking in heaven. After all, being swung off a balcony just won’t be the same if it’s being done by somebody else. They won’t be able to get that feeling of love whilst assuming that imminent death is about to occur.

But hey, the death of a family member isn’t all bad. Especially when your dad was a global superstar. Prince Michael, Paris and Prince Michael II can now lead the life of luxury, though they’ll still curse their dad for giving them stupid names. However, would you care when you get £45,000 pocket money per month? Apparently so – the little tykes want more cash to spend on stuff we can only imagine will be limited edition and00 has a pattern resembling vomit.

During his own lifetime Michael Jackson squandered his own money away on all sorts of rubbish. This comes despite the fact he literally earned billions of pounds with fans buying records, even if they weren’t as good as the earlier output. But how do you blow all your cash? We’d forgive him if he’d blew it all on booze and wild nights with hookers. But he just disappointed us all.

What he really should have done is invested in a mirror. Over the years, it looked like he decided to spend his musical royalties on morphing his face into something out of a B-movie horror flick. Towards the end of his lifetime, his nose pretty much looked like one of his children had moulded it out of putty and stuck it back on his melting face. A tragic site for all to see. But a money saver when Halloween came round.

As someone once said, money doesn’t buy happiness. Though we need to take that quote in proper context. Going out on a night can cost an arm and a leg, so we won’t call Michael Jackson’s kids spoilt little brats for demanding more money. For all we know they’re smart and have an in-depth knowledge of the housing markets to guarantee a place on the property ladder. Or they’re going to be just like their dad and spend strange amounts of money on chairs and lamps made out of denim until they end up horribly in debt. The Daily Star reports:

“A judge has agreed a £10,000 boost to keep the youngsters in the style they are used to. Lawyers acting for the children appealed to increase the amount to £55,000 a month, say court papers. They had argued that the current sum paid to Jacko’s mum Katherine, 80, was not enough to make ends meet.”

Urgh, imagine only getting a normal person’s salary of possibly around £1,500 per month or, shock horror, being on a minimum wage job. To the Jacksons that would seem like physical and mental torture. Where would they put their 1000” TV and pillows stuffed with Dodo feathers? They’d have to fight with tramps in order to survive.

If anyone from Channel Five is reading, would you take us up on our new Jackson TV show that involves taking a member of the Jackson family and putting them in a normal situation? It could be amusing to watch them break down as a failed door to door salesperson.

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Ever since Michael Jackson’s children were born, doubt has been cast on who the real daddy is.

Some say that the tykes look nothing like their father; other men claim to be the sperm donor. A couple of bright sparks in the community also twigged that his children are white instead of black.

Since Jackson’s death, the protective shield masks that were shoved over his kids’ heads have been removed. We can now go nuts over what they look like and go aww when they cry at funerals beamed live to the world. Now newspaper reports claim that Michael Jackson created his vision of a perfect child and looked to Nazism for inspiration.

It’s common knowledge that Michael Jackson liked kids. He acted like one, had a children’s theme park built in his back garden and hosted lots of fun sleepover parties. Unfortunately, other parents didn’t see Jesus Juice as a delicious bedtime drink to send everyone to sleepy land. Nor did they take kindly to him allegedly playing all sorts of intimate games with their offspring. This ended up seeing the grown ups play courtroom with Michael Jackson.

During the run-up to his sell-out gigs in London, all sorts of nutty requests were made to the gig promoters. Alongside the usual request of all singing and dancing elephants, Jackson requested a rainbow collection of children to perform with him. Will this make the comedy movie that’s coming out near Halloween? We hope so, as we can visualise Jackson spraypainting a rowdy Brazilian child violet and then caning him for moving out of place in the special love rainbow.

Now call us odd, but we have always found it a tiny bit strange that such a request should be made. To vaguely cement this idea firmly into our empty heads, a typically anonymous source has told the News of the World:

“Michael is not the father of a single one of the children in the biological way, but in chemical terms he oversaw their creation as a dad. He wanted his kids to be the best in every possible way and that prompted him to take the laboratory route instead of leaving nature to take its course.”

All is forgiven Michael! We didn’t mean to call you a wacko, a nonce, a pervert, an idiot or a monkey lover! You were some sort of evil super genius who did mental midnight experiments in a secret underground bunker 30,000 feet beneath the earth. With a dash of sperm in one hand and a freshly fertile egg in the other, who would give their bodily bits and pieces to a crazy man like Michael Jackson? Again, the source tells the News of the World:

“One friend he asked to donate sperm was a well-known Hollywood actor who now suspects he may be the father of Blanket. He had a unique bond with Michael.”

We bet it was Screech from Saved by the Bell. He would do anything for a shot of cash. So desperate, he might even literally crack one out and give it to Michael Jackson to lap up.

But it gets better. Supposedly it seems, good old innocent Michael liked to boogie on down whilst reading all about the works of Hitler and Nazism. That’s right, Nazism – that calm and peaceful movement known all around the world. Once again, the News of the World reports:

“Jacko’s interest in genetic engineering was sparked by his huge interest in Nazi history. He was obsessed with Adolf Hitler, collected Nazi medals and scoured books about evil experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz.”

We won’t go too much into Nazism really and their Aryan Race. Basically because anyone who’s into that doesn’t really need any more encouragement. And if these allegations are true, then that potentially makes Michael Jackson a worse person than Gary Glitter and Lee Ryan combined.

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If one positive has come from Michael Jackson’s death, it’s probably the fact that it’s made Joe Jackson famous again.

Because, unequivocally, that man is a hero. Joe Jackson proved that, armed with little more than steely focus and a refreshing openness to emotional and physical torment, any normal child can transform into a quivering, tragic, drug-addicted megastar. And after Katherine Jackson was awarded custody of Michael Jackson’s children, everyone secretly hoped that Joe Jackson would work his magic on them, too.

But it’s not to be. Joe Jackson has promised to only intermittently visit and/or terrify the children. Spoilsport.

If all 80-year-olds were more like Joe Jackson then the world would be a much more productive place. Admittedly it’d also be a much more violent place, to the extent that everyone under the age of 80 would be afraid to ever leave their house for fear of getting beaten up, but mainly it’d be more productive. Just look at Joe Jackson, for example. He’s always working.

Why, just three short days after the tragic death of his most famous son, Joe Jackson was out on the streets telling anyone who’d listen about his new hip-hop recording project. Insensitive? Well, yes, obviously. But productive? That too, probably.

And it’s this monomaniacal determination to piggybck on the success of others that was going to fix all this Michael Jackson mess. After all, rumour had it that Joe Jackson was toying with the idea of whipping Michael Jackson’s three grieving children into becoming a brand-new best-selling pop act called The Jackson Three. It was a genius idea – the children would have a project to take their minds off their dead father, the group would clearly make a lot of money and Joe Jackson would be able to get his good old beatin’ stick out of storage.

Katherine Jackson getting custody of Michael Jackson’s kids seemed like the last piece of the puzzle, too, because then Joe could just pop round at any time and terrify them into dancing better. But it’s not going to happen – Joe Jackson has officially stated to a Los Angeles court that he’s not going to be anything like a guardian to the kids, as NME reports:

Joe Jackson wrote, “I have had a close family relationship with these grandchildren since their birth. I do visit the family residence from time to time and will continue to do so, however I will not be involved in raising the children.”

As sad as it is that The Jackson Three will probably never happen happen now, it might be best for the kids in the long run. After all, they’ve gone through one hell of an upheaval and right now they need the loving stability that only comes from living with a very old woman who none of them have any direct genetic connection with whatsoever.

As for Joe Jackson? A little thing like this isn’t going to get him down. And we’re sure that we’ll see proof of that in the coming weeks when Joe Jackson launches his new version of The Jackson Three featuring an incontinent old tramp, a horse in a top hat and an acorn.

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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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Michael Jackson’s kids must be going through a horrific time at the moment – their dad has just died, after all.

Worse still, it looks like they’re going to be at the centre of a confusing, emotionally-exhausting custody battle. But maybe, just maybe, help is at hand. And it comes in the shining, mad-eyed, massively unsuitable form of Diana Ross.

That’s right. Michael Jackson stated in his will that if his mother is unable to look after his kids, then Diana Ross – his co-star in The Wiz – should. And if she can’t, then the giant plasticine rabbit from Moonwalker should. Probably.

Right, this is probably going to take some explaining. Michael Jackson is dead, this much we know. And, aside from massive debt and a robot version of his own head, Michael Jackson also left behind three young children. And that’s where things start to get confusing.

Because Michael Jackson almost certainly wasn’t the biological father of the children. And the woman who everyone thought was the biological mother of the children – the one who traded all form of parental access for cash three years ago – might not be the mother after all. And that’s why Michael Jackson has decided that the only person who could ever properly raise his kids is his mother Katherine – who you may remember as the woman who sold Michael Jackson’s childhood for a quick buck 40 years ago, ultimately setting him on the path that led to his death.

The problem with this is that Katherine Jackson is a 79-year-old women, and it doesn’t seem very practical for her to care for Michael Jackson’s kids. Not because the children will be freaked out by the prospect of living with a frail, gnarled old lady – because, come on, look at who their dad was – but because it’d obviously be quite exhausting for her. So, like the all-knowing figure of universal love that he was, Michael Jackson concocted a plan-B while writing his will.

That plan? Fobbing the kids off to Diana Ross. Seriously. AFP reports:

“I have intentionally omitted to provide my former wife, Deborah Jean Rowe Jackson,” Jackson stated in the will, which was dated July 7, 2002. “If any of my children are minors at the time of my death, I nominate my mother, Katherine Jackson as guardian … If Katherine Jackson fails to survive me, or is unable or unwilling to act as guardian, I nominate Diana Ross as guardian.”

Diana Ross. Diana Ross. How’s that going to make Debbie Rowe feel, for crying out loud? She can’t look after the children but Diana Ross – the notoriously cranky and apparently balding pensioner who was once arrested for allegedly fondling a security guard’s breasts at an airport and has spent time in rehab this decade dealing with her drug and alcohol problems – can? Talk about a kick in the teeth.

We feel for Michael Jackson’s kids, we really do. Imagine how they’ll feel, sitting down day after day to listen to another one of Auntie Diana’s interminable stories about what Gene Simmons‘ penis looks like. And they won’t even be able to go outside for a kickabout because Diana Ross is crap at that as well.

Still, it could be worse. It’s clear that Michael Jackson wanted his kids to be cared for by a star from one of his films, so those kids should probably be breathing a sigh of relief that they’re not currently on a minibus heading towards Joe Pesci‘s house. That’s something, right?

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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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