Parents, we all have them. And we all have memories of them.

From the time you crapped yourself in a busy shopping centre to when your father started using swearwords in full conversation. Face it, we’ve all been there. Well that’s unless you’re a weird test-tube child and you were grown for scientific amusement.

Sadly, not all relationships between parents and their offspring can go smoothly. There can be a variety of reasons of this. In the case of Michael Jackson he objected to his dad Joe Jackson whipping the stuffing out of him. But time heals all and love conquers emotions. Or, if your son has raked in as much posthumous money as Michael Jackson, then time means that daddy gets an easy payday.

It’s been well documented that, as a child, Michael Jackson didn’t really have much time to ride his bike on the pavement, sell awful-tasting homemade lemonade or play baseball like everyone else. Instead, he was forced to attend various singing and dancing classes. For Joe Jackson, it paid off and all of his children went off to have successful careers. Apart from LaToya. And Janet lately. And the one with the hat.

After all the beatings, Michael decided to omit Joe Jackson from his will when he suddenly died this year. Why an apparent fit and healthy man makes a will is unclear to us, we plan to just let everyone fight over our possessions. While his father was left out, provisions were made for his mother and children. So couldn’t daddy Jackson just beat one of them until they gave him some money? No – he’ll just ignore the will put a claim in for some of Michael Jackson’s money instead. So what does he need the money for? according to BBC News:

“Joe Jackson’s outgoings were listed in the court papers and included rent for his Las Vegas home, meals out, air travel and hotel accommodation.”

Christ, he sounds like some sort of really groomed male escort doesn’t he? Just how much does all of this rack up to each month? Incredibly it’s in the region of $20,000. Does Joe Jackson only eat meat reared from penguins and take flights to random destinations on tiny islands that he claims are his own country? Probably, BBC News reports again that he currently only receives $1700 from the estate. He’d never last in Stoke.

Since Michael Jackson has earned close to $100 million since his death, he truly is getting the last laugh up in heaven. After all, nobody can force him to give money to people he doesn’t want to. And as far as we know, heaven has no legal system so he can get away with whatever he wants!

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They say that losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to a parent, but that’s clearly rubbish.

Look at Michael Jackson‘s parents. They’re living proof that the worst thing that can happen to a parent is losing a millionaire child who wrote you out of his will because you used to mercilessly beat him all the time. But Katherine and Joe Jackson aren’t going to let a little thing like the dying wishes of their beloved son stop them from getting rich, so they’re contesting Michael Jackson’s will.

They waited for 27 days, for anyone running office sweepstakes.

In the last few weeks we’ve been criticised for not recognising Michael Jackson’s genius. Well, to those people we say this – sorry. You were right. You were absolutely right. Michael Jackson was a genius. Not because of what he did in his life – we still maintain that if squeaking and having an uncomfortably close relationship with children makes you a genius then all guinea pigs should be signed up to Mensa immediately – but because of what he’s done in death.

Why? Because Michael Jackson invoked a ‘no contest’ clause in his will. It’s brilliant. It means that if you try to disagree with anything that Michael Jackson said in it, you get immediately written out. It’s sort of like a legal version of writing ‘Jonathan wets the bed IDST’ on someone else’s exercise book at school. You can try and erase it if you like, but it won’t matter because even if you destroy it, it’ll still be true.

And this is great news for Michael Jackson’s family. After all, the will largely ignored them in favour of naming John McClain and John Branca as the co-executors of his estate – so what do they lose if their challenge fails? A handful of kids that probably aren’t even theirs anyway, that’s what. And who cares about them? One of them’s called Blanket for crying out loud. Who wants to look after a kid called Blanket? Honestly, contesting the will is a win-win for Katherine and Joe Jackson. Which is probably why they’re doing it, as Rolling Stone reports:

Katherine Jackson has reportedly hired the Jackson family attorney to challenge son Michael Jackson’s 2002 will… Katherine’s lawyers were in court last Friday, July 17th, to see if they can challenge the co-executors’ decisions without triggering the “no contest” clause.

Actually, we can totally see the point of Michael Jackson’s family here – they’re his family, for crying out loud. And, true, Michael Jackson may have sensibly chosen a pair of business-minded professionals to oversee his estate, but Katherine and Joe Jackson are Michael Jackson’s family. Doesn’t that mean anything any more?

Oh alright, we’ll admit it – we want Michael Jackson’s family to run his estate purely because we want to visit the Neverland gift shop in a few years and buy a commemorative ‘Michael Jackson, King Of Pop – I Definitely Didn’t Hit Him, You Know’ T-shirt designed by his dad. Is that so wrong?

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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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This news just in: Michael Jackson is still dead. In other news, people still won’t shut up about it.

And why should they? Michael Jackson’s death was just the tip of a depressing iceberg that we’ll hear about for months – especially now that Michael Jackson’s will from 2002 has apparently turned up. It’ll take a while for the contents to be made public, but early reports suggest that Michael Jackson’s father Joe doesn’t even get a look in.

It’ll come as a painful shock to Joe Jackson – we heard that he really had his eye on Michael’s nightmarish abandoned fairground, too.

Getting named in Michael Jackson’s will has to be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you’ll know that during his lifetime Michael Jackson considered you to be enough of a friend to repay you for your loyalty after his death. But on the other hand, Jesus, what on Earth would you end up getting?

Did Michael Jackson like you enough to give you the golf buggy with a creepy painting of himself dressed as Peter Pan daubed across the bonnet? One of the beds that he slept with kids in? Perhaps if you were only an acquaintance you’d be slung a couple of half-empty bottles of Jesus Juice in a gift basket or something.

Just look at Michael Jackson’s mother Katherine, for God’s sake – she’s ended up with custody of Michael Jackson’s children, even though she technically shares about the same amount of DNA with them as she does with, say, a seagull. She can’t be happy about that at all. She’s a 79-year-old woman. She doesn’t want three strange little kids running around her house. She probably wanted the robot Michael Jackson head from Moonwalker. Everyone wants robot Michael Jackson head from Moonwalker.

But at least that’s more than Joe Jackson’s getting. According to early unconfirmed reports, Michael Jackson has cut his father – who he long accused of beating him – out of his will entirely. The Daily Mail reports:

The singer made no mention of Joe Jackson in a will drawn up in 2002. Now that signed document – the only one traced so far in a frantic scramble over Jacko’s estate – could be made legally binding if a later one fails to turn up. It would mean 80-year-old Joe Jackson, who publicly began cashing in on his son’s legacy within hours of his death, might not get a penny.

It’s a sad reflection of the broken relationship between Michael and Joe Jackson, and a stark warning to all the fathers of the world.

Admittedly that warning is ‘if you physically abuse your son and steal his childhood in order to vicariously snatch the fame and extraordinary wealth that you weren’t able to attain by yourself as a youth, then there’s a good chance that you won’t get to be embroiled in the headache-inducing legal complications that will inevitably follow his ghoulish, debt-ridden death’ – which actually makes the idea of beating your children sound quite appealing – but a warning’s a warning.

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