That Michael Jackson, what a character. He barely went five minutes without getting into some sort of hilarious situation.

If he wasn’t buying all sorts of ridiculous crap that he couldn’t afford, he was probably skidding around in monkey poo. People complain when we call him Wacko Jacko, but how could you not?

One thing that really did make Michael less wacky was his relationship with children. There’s just something a little bit weird about a grown man who shares his bed with kids, no matter how innocently it’s done. But Michael Jackson is dead now, so that will no longer be a problem, right? Wrong – Michael Jackson has returned from beyond the grave, and once again he’s targeting the young. The very young.

Now, during an ultrascan, parents-to-be Dawn Kelley and William Hickman spotted something strange. Normally, people wouldn’t be excited by this, but the couple are from Sunderland. Usually, the town only gets excited when the giro cheques come in or the local chip shop runs a deal. But Dawn and William clearly saw dear old dead Michael Jackson on their unborn child’s face – that’s better than spending £20 on a fruit machine and winning a tenner back. Mr Hickhan told The Telegraph:

“I showed my daughter Ami, who’s six, and she saw it straight away, so I thought ‘well if she can see it too it’s not just me seeing things We were looking at the pictures again, and I just saw Jacko there.”

Bloody hell! So will that finally put Sunderland on the tourist map? Will grieving Michael Jackson fans make pilgrimages Sunderland to see the unborn Jacko miracle in a town that has more branches of Greggs than people? The queues haven’t started to form as yet, and even the proud father-to-be doesn’t seem arsed that his future child is marked by Michael Jackson. Speaking again, Mr Hickhan said:

“None of us are really Michael Jackson fans. I mean I like him, but we’re not crazy about him or anything.”

Perhaps the couple could hatch a Balloon Boy-style plot and force the child to work until it belts out a number one hit. But since the newborn will be a girl, they run the risk of giving birth to a LaToya, and that’s the thing that all parents fear the most.

However, it does seem that the couple from Sunderland expected this birth to be all mystical and strange. Had they been watching the Michael Jackson séance with comedy medium Derek Acorah? Don’t be daft, the couple are from Sunderland remember. The happy mother said:

“But it is my seventh child, and they say seven is a mythical number.”

Why don’t you make up your own mind – here’s the spooky Michael Jackson ultrasound in all its glory.

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The American Music Awards – like the Grammys, but more likely to make you lose total faith in humanity – always surprise.

And last night they surprised. The two biggest winners at last night’s AMAs were Taylor Swift (who wasn’t there) and Michael Jackson (who hasn’t released an album of new material since 2001) (and was nominated for a Greatest Hits album that’s over six years old) (and who is quite conclusively dead).

That wasn’t the surprise, though. No, the big surprise was that Black Eyed Peas won the prize for Best Pop Group. Honestly, what’s wrong with these people? Don’t they have ears?

Oh good. It’s the American Music Awards. You know what this means, don’t you? It means that awards season is here. Soon we’ll be up to our necks in 150 different types of award shows, all doling out meaningless baubles to films that nobody watched, music that nobody paid for and TV shows that people only put on because they’re afraid of silence. Joy.

And if the American Music Awards are any indication, the theme of this year’s award season is going to be Let’s Give Loads Of Stuff To Michael Jackson. Last night at the AMAs, Michael Jackson won Best Soul Artist, Best Pop Male, Best Pop Album and Best Soul Album, even though he didn’t release anything within the allotted time period for nominations. Or within any of the last eight allotted time periods for nominations, in fact. People reports:

“It’s not just about the winnings, the awards,” his brother Jermaine said in an acceptance speech. “It’s mainly the message. The message Michael had will live on forever. He saw good in everyone. … Start with love and let’s love each other.” Sister Janet Jackson got a standing ovation when she opened the show with a choreographed-heavy medley of her hits.

Jermaine Jackson is right – the continued love for Michael Jackson isn’t about winning the awards. It’s about being nominated for the awards, because that way Jermaine Jackson gets to spend his evenings somewhere warm where there’s free food. It’s going to be a cold winter, and he’ll need to stock up before people start forgetting about his brother.

It’s no surprise that Michael Jackson won so many American Music Awards – he was nominated for several of them, after all – but we’re praying that this doesn’t start a trend. Sure, a handful of AMAs are one thing, but nobody wants the Oscars to follow suit and award Moonwalker the Best Picture trophy, do they? Nobody wants the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe to go to Michael Jackson for his role in The Wiz, do they? Nobody wants Michael Jackson to win a retroactive British Comedy Award for that time he hilariously dangled his baby from a balcony, do they? What? They do? Weird.

But just because Michael Jackson won so many prizes, it doesn’t mean that the American Music Awards only honour washed-up shells of their former selves out of nothing more than a mixture of guilt and nostalgia, even though the acts are thoroughly undeserving of them, does it? Just take a look at who won the AMA Artist Of The Year award last night.

It was Whitney Houston. OK, you may have a point.

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It’s been close to half a year, but the question still remains: what killed Michael Jackson? Was it drugs?

Was it stress? Was it drugs? Was it financial strain? Or drugs? Drugs? Was it that giant dose of medical-grade anaesthetic he was given right before he died? Could that have anything to do with Michael Jackson’s death? Anyone?

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter what we think. But it does matter what Janet Jackson thinks, because a) Michael Jackson was her brother and b) she’s got a greatest hits album out that she needs to plug. And Janet Jackson is pointing the finger squarely at Michael Jackson’s doctor.

Nobody tell Jermaine Jackson – because he’ll only start organising another one of his tacky ‘JERMAINE JACKSON PRESENTS JERMAINE JACKSON AND THE JERMAINE JACKSON ALLSTARS (In A Tribute To Michael Jackson) STARRING JERMAINE JACKSON!’ concerts if he finds out – but Michael Jackson’s death means that Janet Jackson is now the world’s most famous Jackson.

And that’s a role that comes with a lot of responsibility. It’s Janet who must continue to spread the profoundly philanthropic messages that Michael Jackson sprinkled through his songs – messages like ‘heal the world’, ‘you are not alone’ and ‘burn this disco out’ – and it’s Janet who must take it upon herself to blame people for Michael Jackson’s death. She’s already quite good at the second one.

You see, as far as Janet Jackson is concerned, Michael Jackson would still be alive if it wasn’t for Dr Conrad Murray and his evil determination to kill her brother by nefariously injecting him with the deadly drug that he had specifically requested to be injected with and would have somehow got his hands on anyway. What a bastard.

Sure, Dr Murray hasn’t been charged with anything, but that doesn’t mean that he’s definitely completely responsible for Michael Jackson’s death and should never be allowed to doctor again. That’s what Janet has said in an interview, in any case. MTV reports:

“He was the one that was administering. … I think he’s responsible.” Though Murray has not been charged in the case and his lawyer said he did not administer anything that “should have” caused Jackson’s death, Janet reportedly tells ABC’s Robin Roberts that she believes Murray should not be allowed to practice medicine anymore.

Regardless of whether you think she’s right about this or not – personally we’d arrest the Pope if it meant that everyone would shut up about Michael Jackson – you have to admit that emotionally blaming a doctor for the death of your brother on national television is a weird way to go about promoting your new album. Let’s hope that Janet Jackson’s Number Ones – out today, kids! – gets a suitable sales boost because of this.

In fact, what with Rihanna plugging her new album with stories about being choked unconscious and now Janet Jackson plugging her new album with stories about mourning the recent death of her brother, it’d seem as if misery is the hot new way to get a hit record. Snoop Dogg’s got a new album coming out next month – he’ll need to think of something really sad to talk about if he wants it to be a success. May we suggest inventing a story about being bitten on the arse by a stoat?

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We all know more or less everything about Michael Jackson’s death by now. We know what killed Michael Jackson.

We know what he was doing before he died. Thanks to Derek Acorah last week, we even know that Michael Jackson spends most of his time in the afterlife itching to say hello to Quincy Jones. But, because it was a private ceremony, we don’t really know exactly what happened at Michael Jackson’s funeral.

We wish we did, though, because it’s been revealed that the funeral cost Michael Jackson’s estate almost one million dollars. Still, he’s dead, so it’s not like the money could have been spent on anything else, like giving his children a better quality of life or anything, is it? Oh.

The Forest Lawn Great Mausoleum is a pretty exclusive club to get into. It’s where only the best of the best go to die. And if you want to spend eternity next to the likes of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, it’s going to cost you. It doesn’t matter that the fact you’re dead means that you may as well be fed through a wood chipper and kept in a second-hand Tupperware box for all the good it’ll do you. If you want to be a part of the Forest Lawn Great Mausoleum set, be prepared to shell out.

Be prepared to shell out $855,730, in fact, because that’s what it cost Michael Jackson’s estate to have him entombed there. We know this because a judge has just made the Michael Jackson funeral expenses public. And, as well as the $855,730 – including $590,000 for the spot in the mausoleum alone – the Jackson family also spent:

$11,716 on invitations,

$30,000 on security,

$15,000 on a funeral director,

$16,000 on flowers,

$21,455 on dinner afterwards, and

$35,000 on Michael Jackson’s burial outfit.

Now we know what you’re thinking – that seems like a lot of money to spend on an outfit that nobody will ever see, especially since Michael Jackson was so thin when he died that a decent-sized tube sock would have probably done the trick – but what was Michael Jackson’s motto? That’s right, it was ‘Heal the world (and wear something grotesquely expensive while you’re at it)’. We think. We could be wrong.

Anyway, it’s churlish for us to whine about the colossal expense of Michael Jackson’s funeral. A family has every right to send off one of their own in whatever manner they see fit. After all, given the hoopla that surrounded his death, the Jacksons probably wanted to make the most of the brief moment when they were allowed to grieve for Michael in private.

Plus they’ll most likely turn a nice profit from it when the official Michael Jackson: The Funeral! DVD inevitably goes on sale in a couple of years. You’ve got to speculate to accumulate, after all.

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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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Obviously Michael Jackson’s new film This Is It would top the weekend box office this week. Obviously.

It had everything going for it. Michael Jackson’s millions of fans are using This Is It as a way to pay tribute to his life. Plus This Is It will only be exhibited theatrically for two weeks, so everyone will see it at the same time. Plus no other big films opened on Friday, giving This Is It a clear path to weekend box office glory.

Also, given the choice between This Is It and Law Abiding Citizen, who wouldn’t choose the harrowing documentary about the painfully thin spectre-like drug addict in the silly wig?

So, as we’ve made clear, This Is It is the number one movie at the US weekend box office this week. As much as that’s a testament to Michael Jackson’s legacy as an entertainer, credit should also be given to the movie’s producers for rolling the film out in such a short space of time.

It’s a shame, though – we were sort of hoping that Jermaine Jackson would be a producer because, given his handling of the Austrian tribute concert, we were looking forward to seeing a film called Michael Jackson’s This Is It… No, Wait, This Is It. Alright This Is Nearly It. Sort Of. Oh Bugger It, We’ll Bring It Out Next Year Instead (Even Though We Probably Won’t). That’d be much more in keeping with Michael Jackson’s life. Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 – This Is It (And this really is it from Michael Jackson, too. Apart from the DVD release. And the one-year theatrical re-release. And the remastering of Michael Jackson’s entire back-catalogue. And the 20 albums of unreleased material that Michael Jackson recorded that’ll be slowly dripped out over the next decade or two. And every other conceivable way that people think they can squeeze any extra drops of cash out of Michael Jackson’s body. But, yeah, apart from that, this is it) $21,300,000

2 - Paranormal Activity (Apparently things are scarier when they’re recorded on cheap equipment. That’s why Saw 7 is going to be filmed exclusively with a newsagent’s static CCTV camera. We heard that most of the torture will revolve around a three-week-old copy of Grazia magazine, you know) $16,540,000

3 - Law Abiding Citizen (Bore Abiding Citizen, more like. Are we right? Huh? Are we right? Seriously though, we have no interest in this film whatsoever) $7,303,000

4 - Couples Retreat (Hey, Couples Retreat has been in the weekend box office for ages, maybe it’s actually quite good after all. Or maybe everyone on the planet is stupid. Yes, that’s probably the reason) $6,097,000

5 - Saw VI (Where Jigsaw runs out of pointlessly confusing ways to kill people and just shoots someone in the first minute, then does a nice wordsearch for the remainder of the film) $5,560,000

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What do Michael Jackson and STDs have in common? They are both annoying and won’t go away. No matter how much you itch, apply cream and shower. Oh, that might just be our crabs.

Genuinely, we thought Michael Jackson’s This Is It film would be the last from him. We’d get to laugh at the fake footage of him jumping from bridges, swinging from buildings and making fans believe he wasn’t drugged up and close to being in a coma. Now we’ve heard word that Michael Jackson is making a technical comeback with this year’s X Factor monkeys. All for charity of course. Like that helps.

There are a few details to get out the way. Firstly, the song that has been chosen is Michael Jackson’s You Are Not Alone. Ideally, all of the acts are meant to take it in turn to carefully reinterpret the timeless classic. Otherwise Joe Jackson will be on hand with his motivational tool, called the ‘encouragement belt’. However, we know that John and Edward will totally make it their own and out-do every other act there.

Is the choice of song down to the simple fact that X Factor bosses want to pay tribute to Michael Jackson? After all, before he died it was rumoured that the legend was due to moonwalk his way around the stage and tell all the contestants they were beautiful and special inside. Or, as we think, is someone just having a big massive laugh at his expense? Let’s look at the evidence.

The money raised by the X Factor single is going to Great Ormond Street. Don’t get us wrong, we’re all for charity as hospitals help people get better so they can do productive stuff with their lives. However, for anyone who doesn’t know, Great Ormond Street is a charity for sick children. Anyone spot the slight irony?

Whether Michael Jackson was guilty or not, it seems unfair that an American singer who was accused of child molestation should be allowed to have the charity honours with the English X Factor finalists. After all, the UK has got plenty of its own. Why couldn’t they have done a version of Gary Glitter’s I Love You Love Me produced by Jonathan King instead, huh? Don’t be afraid of your Britishness, X Factor! Heatworld reports:

“The 12 finalists have covered the Michael Jackson classic You Are Not Alone, and they’ll be performing the song during the results show on Sunday 15 November, when the track will also be available for download.”

There we are then. A guaranteed charity X Factor number one to quite likely stay at the top spot until John and Edward get the Christmas number one with their winning X Factor performance.

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Michael Jackson’s This Is It opens on Wednesday, and it’s bound to be a stupendous hit. But what’s it like?

Well, frankly, who cares? This Is It will be a hit no matter what it’s about. This is It could consist of nothing but Michael Jackson mumbling threats at a sleeping cat for two hours and it’ll still end up as one of the year’s top-grossing films. But it would be sort of nice to know what This Is It is like, wouldn’t it?

Well fear no more – Michael Jackson’s brother Jackie has seen This Is It, and he loves it. And he once recorded a song called Cruzin’, so he knows quality when he sees it.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It couldn’t have asked for a better name. Not only is it the phrase he repeated again and again like a melting wax mannequin of Rain Man when he first announced his London comeback, but he also managed to record a song of the same name before he shuffled off. And the title has meaning, too – because this really is it from Michael Jackson. Once the film is released, we’ll never hear from him again. Apart from, you know, when his albums keep getting constantly repackaged, each with a brand new unfinished, lacklustre demo bolted onto it to keep the money coming in.

And on Wednesday This Is It will finally be released. And nobody knows what it’ll be like. The movie posters promise that you’ll see Michael Jackson ‘like you’ve never seen him before’, which we originally assumed meant ‘gaunt, frail, wheezing, forgetful, dangerously medicated and conspicuously on the brink of premature death’, before the This Is Not It campaign put the kibosh on that idea.

So we just don’t know. Luckily, This Is It has already been seen by one reviewer, and he’s as impartial as you can possibly get. He’s… oh, he’s Michael Jackson’s brother Jackie Jackson. Here’s what Jackie Jackson thought of This Is It, according to TMZ:

“My brother’s movie ‘This Is It’ is truly riveting. Michael is electrifying! We get a glimpse of a true genius at work. His passionate message for healing the world, saving the planet and our children’s futures is something he was always striving for in his lifetime.”

Might Jackie Jackson have an ulterior motive here? We don’t think so. Remember that this is Jackie Jackson we’re talking about here – a Jackson so staggeringly inconsequential that, rather than waste their time thinking up a proper name for him, his parents just decided call him an abbreviated version of their surname. His opinion counts for even less than yours – and look at the state of you, for crying out loud.

Now, Jermaine Jackson’s review of This Is It is something we’d love to hear. Chances are it’ll go something like:

“My movie ‘Jermaine Jackson’s This Is It’ is truly riveting. I am electrifying! We get a glimpse of a true genius – me, Jermaine Jackson, the original lead singer of The Jackson Five – at work. My passionate message for healing the world, saving the planet and our children’s futures is something I was always striving for in my lifetime. Which is still ongoing, by the way. Not like some people I could mention. I probably have an album out soon or something. Love me!”

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Admit it, if you go and see This Is It next week, it’ll only be to gawp in horror at Michael Jackson’s nearly dead face.

No? Then you’re not a Michael Jackson fan. An international coalition of ‘dedicated Michael Jackson fans’ have set up a website trying to stop people from seeing This Is It on the basis that it deliberately covers up the truth about Michael Jackson’s health.

And we agree! We hereby promise to not see This Is It until someone splices in a scene where Michael Jackson – dangerously thin and without his wig and blitzed on anaesthetic – weeps directly into the camera for 35 minutes. Maybe it’ll be on the DVD.

Even factoring his death into the equation, 2009 has been a mess of failed potential for Michael Jackson. First his comeback concerts were postponed, then they were cancelled forever, then his posthumous tribute concert bit the dust as well. But at least there’s This Is It, the film about Michael Jackson’s comeback rehearsal that’s being released next week. At least that’s going off without a hitch.

True, it may have turned out that This Is It’s eponymous single was actually an 18-year-old Puerto Rican song that Michael Jackson didn’t really write by himself, but the movie’s going off without a hitch. Without a hitch!

Well, apart from all the protesters and stuff. You see, a group of hardline Michael Jackson fans have decided to kick up a stink about This Is It on a website entitled This Is Not It. They’re claiming that This Is It unfairly depicts Michael Jackson as a fun-loving man about town with a twinkle in his eye and a full set of working organs, when everyone knows that he was really a heavily-medicated, almost-dead waif with all the mobility of your ancient nan but none of her hair. Decrying the supposed cover-up, This Is Not It lists all the things that you won’t see in the finished movie, including:

Michael Jackson’s shocking sudden weight loss, reducing him to a mere 108 lbs (49kg) at the time of his death… Kenny Ortega, the director of both the tour and the movie, having to help Michael Jackson up the stairs, having to feed him and cut his food… Everyone around him witnessing to Michael Jackson looking confused and groggy, forgetting the lyrics of his own songs during rehearsals.

Yeah, rubbish, where’s all that in the film, huh? Jesus, how are we supposed to celebrate the man’s life if we can’t even watch a harrowing sequence involving a film director having to cut up meals for a nightmarish, barely-there man who most closely resembles the Sloth guy from Seven? Huh? Didn’t you idiots even know that ‘mind-scarring revulsion’ is an officially-mandated stage of grief? Christ, you people make us sick.

But, still, This Is Not It’s plan is doomed to failure. That footage will never be included in the final movie, because the posters have all been printed up and it’d be inordinately expensive to change the title of This Is It to This Is… Oh My God, What’s Wrong With His Face? at this late stage.

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When Michael Jackson died the world let out a gasp.

Some did so out of a profound sadness, some out of shock, and some just because now their wee sons could go outside unattended.

Not long after, people started worrying about Jackson’s estate. Who would get his Beatles rights? Who’d inherit the dusty set of Captain EO - and what was to happen to his pickled penis?

We heard it’s had kind of a dill/vinegar wrap on since he was twelve.

It ends up the will that made such material designations – according to Randy Jackson – it has a forged signature.

It’s a rough time to be MJ. Not only have all his songs been stolen by Hispanics like 18 years before he recorded them, but at this very moment he’s probably realising that being surrounded by senior citizen women with a Jesus-juice allergy most likely implies that wherever he is – it certainly isn’t his heaven.

A harsh awakening, no doubt.

Well we only wish we could tell him that his name is still wrapped in turmoil down here too. Sure, we finally got the ultimate destination of his children figured out – but what about the rest of his crap? You know, like his pickled penises. And his pants.

It seems some nefarious fellow decided to ensure those pickled penises and pants don’t get to the person whom Michael had intended at all. We know this because it’s recently been made clear that MJ’s 2002 will has a forged signature gracing the long line at the bottom.

That’s what Randy Jackson thinks anyway. TMZ sums things up:

“Randy Jackson claims Michael Jackson could not have signed his 2002 will, because he was 2,475 air miles away from the place the document was supposedly inked. According to the will, it was signed on July 7, 2002 at 5:00 PM in Los Angeles. Randy Jackson tells TMZ he has proof MJ was in New York from July 5 through July 9, on a campaign against Sony honcho Tommy Mottola claiming Mottola had a thing against Black artists.”

Hecklerspray thinks this is most likely a matter of Randy not getting any monkeys out of the deal. Imagine, your brother Michael Jackson dies and you don’t get any monkeys. We’d probably complain too.

We’d complain until we at least got a walrus. Michael probably had dozens of those stashed away. Whoever the proper walrus-inheritor is probably won’t even miss just one.

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Michael Jackson performing in London was meant to be the highlight of the summer.

Instead, we had to make do with Oasis splitting up. Which we were fine with, incidentally. Jackson was supposedly happy to play 50 dates at the O2, a feat that would test his physical and mental abilities.

That didn’t happen because, as you may have heard, Michael Jackson died. Still, as the trailer to for Michael Jackson’s This Is It movie shows, Michael was prancing all over the stage. Still, it doesn’t explain why he dropped down dead soon after.

To make up for the fact that Michael Jackson failed to make his London concerts – rumoured to involve live animals and singing children galore – we’ll soon get to see a Michael Jackson film cobbled together from rehearsal footage. Entitled This Is It, the film is meant to show the best of over 80 hours recorded in the weeks before his death. Below is the over-dramatic trailer…

The beginning of the This Is It trailer is amusing in itself for multiple reasons. Not only does it lead us to believe that Jack Bauer is going to jump through the floor and kill someone, but it doesn’t quite explain the dream that Michael Jackson wanted to share everyone. Was it a dream to build a 20-foot-high sandwich or a working house made from sand? We just don’t ruddy know. Perhaps he’ll tell us during the credits.

The film is also going to upset the Christians. At roughly 34 seconds in, there seems to be a moment where Michael pretends to be Jesus. Perhaps he wanted to see what it was like to be a carpenter, have multiple disciples follow him around or feel big rusty nails being driven in to his hands. It would have been an extreme way to end a gig. Most musicians are happy to smash up their rented instruments.

Worryingly, there does seem to be a small army of Michael Jackson fans who would have attended the gigs. Again during the trailer, you can see them marching around at the 45-second mark. Have they been trained by Michael to share love and warmth? Probably not – Joe Jackson possibly reprogrammed them to smack the audience around during Beat It, just so the audience could have the authentic Michael Jackson experience.

So on October 28, we’ll all finally get to see This Is It in full. However, it’s only going to be out for two weeks. So good is this unmissable event that the people in charge of bringing it to you want to make you miss it. We don’t doubt for a second that it’s because they want to release it on DVD with a host of tossy bonus features.

If you like watching people dance around for 90 minutes, then this carefully-selected and well-edited film is just for you. Don’t expect to see the human side of Michael Jackson, mind. Don’t for one moment think there’ll be a ten-minute scene where he has a poo after a bad Mexican meal.

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Summer has gone and now we’re in autumn – the season we consider to be bisexual.

Whilst we rely on the sun to keep warm, there was once an incident involving Michael Jackson where he generated heat to the people around him. During the filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984, the pyrotechnics went belly-up, leaving the king of court cases to receive second degree burns. In a move that isn’t weird at all, Ralph Cohen – the producer of the advert, bagged up the charred hair. Now he’s flogging it off Saturday.

This never would happened with Coca-Cola.

It’s been a big week for Michael Jackson. Not only has he released a brand new 18-year-old single, but he also got sussed for not actually writing it all by himself. Oh, and it emerged that the song had already been recorded by someone that no-one had heard of. We guess that if he was alive, it would just mean another trip to court.

And now one lucky bidder can win clumps of Michael Jackson’s horrifically burnt hair. It’s long been said that injuries that Michael Jackson sustained during the Pepsi commercial incident sparked his interest in delicious painkillers. However, we can’t be sure if they’re what made him climb trees for musical inspiration, have a monkey as a pet, make stupid and over the top purchases and wave his own children off hotel balconies.

Whenever we see people in peril, we immediately dash over and help. Just the other day, an elderly lady fell over and dropped her shopping. Of course we picked it up and went on our way. She didn’t say thank you, so we just took £20 from her purse as a form of gratuity. Obviously Ralph Cohen is on the same wave length as us. After pocketing Michael’s burnt hair immediately after the accident, he’s been sitting on it, waiting for Michael to kick it so he can flog it off to Michael Jackson fanatics/complete weirdos.

Collectively, there are only twelve strands of hair that are available at auction on October 17. That isn’t enough for you to stick together, attach to your head and pretend to be Michael Jackson, although it is enough for you to fire into the sun to create a Superman IV-style nuclear-powered Michael Jackson supervillain. NME.com reports:

“The 12 strands of hair are valued collectively at £1,000 ($1,600) and will be auctioned at the Radisson Edwardian Hotel at Heathrow, London on October 17.”

What anyone would do with a genuine part of Michael Jackson remains questionable. If you were ever out of dental floss, a strand of hair would substitute perfectly for getting that lump of chicken out your teeth. For the ageing people of the world, the addition of one strand of hair to your head will mean that you can go another day without buying a wig, attempting a comb over or stealing hair off the floor from the barbers.

Imagine how much Michael Jackson’s pubes would go far? He probably had them cast in gold, he was that mental. Grave robbers will be off to Cash Converters to collect a sum of money that will set them up for life.

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Honestly, Michael Jackson should have popped his clogs a few years ago – it’s done wonders for his career.

Take The AMAs. The 2009 American Music Award nominations have just been announced and Michael Jackson is up for five awards, including Best Artist (even though he’s dead and hasn’t released any new albums for eight years) and Best Album (for a Greatest Hits collection that came out six full years ago).

Why has Michael Jackson been nominated so many times? Simple – it’s because he’s dead and dead people can’t make acceptance speeches. Basically it’s all a big ploy to ruin Kanye West’s fun.

This is just a hunch, but we’re expecting the big winner at the 2010 Brit Awards to be Stephen Gately’s nine-year-old cover version of Bright Eyes from Watership Down. Because if the just-announced American Music Award nominations are anything to go by, handing out awards to dead singers regardless of when they last actually recorded anything seems to be the hot new thing.

Michael Jackson, the dead popstar whose last underwhelming album was released in 2001, has been nominated for five awards – Best Artist, Best Male Artist, Best Album, Best R&B Male Artist and Best R&B Album. The album in question, by the way, is Number Ones. From 2003. Even when you factor grief into the decision to nominate him so many times, it still doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

Especially because Michael Jackson has released new music this year, which would have been legitimately eligible for nomination. It’s just a shame that the American Music Awards organisers failed to initiate new categories entitled Best Halfhearted And Truncated Rip-Off Of A Song From Grand Theft Auto and Best Cover Version Of An 18-Year-Old Puerto Rican Song That Nobody Had Ever Heard Of Until Yesterday, because Michael Jackson would have bloody well walked those.

Somewhat inevitably, news of all these Michael Jackson nominations have been met with bemusement from all corners, not least the LA Times:

Regardless of retail impact, a 2009 award show should be restricted to albums actually recorded within its recent history. At last check, Jackson has already won plenty of American Music Award trophies for the songs on “Number Ones,” including an artist of the century accolade in 2002. A segment or two honoring Jackson would have been a better way to recognise the King of Pop’s contributions to music.

Actually, you know what? Screw it. Based on unit sales and radio play, Michael Jackson probably does deserve all of these nominations. And let’s not forget the most important thing here – if Michael Jackson doesn’t get nominated then he can’t win, and if he doesn’t win then Jermaine Jackson can’t make an acceptance speech by proxy where he insinuates that he had a greater hand in the making of his brother’s hit records than he actually did. Won’t anyone think of Jermaine here? Jesus.

And anyway, surely the American Music Award voters are smart enough to realise that the basis for Michael Jackson’s nominations are flawed, and that maybe acts who have made legitimately eligible albums of new material would be more deserving of the awards. What’s that? The American Music Awards are voted for by the public?

Oh bugger.

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When you heard Michael Jackson’s new single This Is It yesterday, you probably thought “Wow, Michael’s still got it.”

And you’re right. Michael Jackson has still got it. It’s just that ‘it’ in this case refers to an 18-year-old collection of obscure Puerto Rican pop songs. Because This Is It was first released in 1991 by an artist called Sa-Fire, who we haven’t heard of either.

What’s more, it’s been announced that Paul Anka will get half of the royalties from This Is It, ensuring him a massive payday. So just imagine how much bigger the payday would have been if the song was actually any good.

We don’t know about you, but yesterday we were actually pretty scared. It saw the first play of Michael Jackson’s first posthumous single This Is It and, terrifyingly, things went off without a hitch. That’s not the Michael Jackson way at all. There were no scandals, no spurious postponements, no giraffes sploshing around in pools of their own blood. It was all coordinated with a level of professionalism that would have made Michael Jackson blanch, if it was possible for his skin to get any lighter than it already was. Obviously.

Announcing a new single and then releasing it on time without any controversy isn’t the way to celebrate Michael Jackson’s life. Organising a tribute concert in Vienna and then cancelling it because nobody wanted to play there – now that’s the way to celebrate Michael Jackson’s life. This Is It had no problems, no snarl-ups, no snafus – which is why we were scared.

In retrospect, though, we shouldn’t have bothered. This Is It had plenty of problems, snarl-ups and snafus. We just had to wait for them to emerge. Problem number one was that This Is It was co-written with My Way writer Paul Anka – and originally titled I Never Knew – for a 1983 album that never came to fruition because of an argument between Jackson and Anka. This meant that Paul Anka would have to receive half of the royalties for the song’s re-release which, as he told TMZ, he was more than happy to accept:

“They realize it’s a mistake, they realize it’s my song, they realize it’s my production of his vocal in my studio and I am getting 50 percent of the whole project, actually, which is fair.”

And problem number two is that This Is It has already been released once, by a Puerto Rican singer called Sa-Fire 18 years ago. Here it is…

We’re over the moon that This Is It has turned out to be such a monumental balls-up. It’s how Michael Jackson would have wanted to be remembered. Obviously the Michael Jackson movie This Is It still poses a problem, but we’re sure that the producers still have time to bungle it in a respectfully Jackson-esque way before its release. Maybe they can prime the reels to catch fire 15 minutes in, or just recut the whole thing until it consists of nothing but home-recorded footage of a toddler carelessly hitting a yogurt pot with the back of a spoon for 45 seconds or something.

We know you can do it, This Is It producers. We believe in you!

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Michael Jackson’s aborted comeback shows were dubbed This Is It. And his new movie is called This Is It.

Now Michael Jackson has a new song. Guess what it’s called. That’s right – it’s called Mr Dingleberry’s Enchanted Bloodhound. No, no it’s not. It’s also called This Is It. And the good news is that, provided that Free As A Bird is your favourite Beatles song and you feel that Tupac Shakur never really came into his own until several years after he died, it isn’t completely awful.

You want to listen to Michael Jackson’s This Is It, don’t you? Oh, go on then.

Michael Jackson’s death has taught us all two exceptionally valuable lessons. Lesson number one is that you probably shouldn’t take medical-grade anaesthetic on a recreational basis, and lesson number two is that death can actually increase your productivity by up to 75%.

Because what did Michael Jackson do in his last few years? Not a lot – there were all the lawsuits, obviously, and the occasional bout of transvestitism to keep him occupied, but that was about it. Even his comeback shows didn’t sound particularly heartening, what with the postponements and the rumours of ill health and the contractual obligations to only appear onstage for 13 minutes per concert. But now he’s dead? There’s no stopping Michael Jackson.

Seriously. Not only has Michael Jackson made a movie from beyond the grave, but he’s also recorded a new song to accompany it. Well, we say ‘new song’, but he actually recorded it in 1991. And then decided that it wasn’t very good. Not even good enough to be a b-side. Not even better than Earth Song. And so he locked it away so that it could never be heard. And now, probably on the basis that the first line of the song also happens to be the title of his new movie, it’s being released as a transparently opportunistic single.

But, on the plus side, at least This Is It is better than the last posthumous music we heard from him, on the basis that it’s an entire song and it hasn’t been ripped off from an underwhelming song on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack. And it’s all over the internet, too. Here, have a listen…

If you listen closely enough to This Is It, you’ll hear Michael Jackson’s brothers harmonising on backing vocals. This is down to the verbal arrangement that Michael Jackson had with his brother Jermaine on his deathbed whereby Jermaine agreed to appear on every single last piece of posthumous Michael Jackson merchandise, even if he logically doesn’t even have anything to do with it and the merchandise ends up appearing inferior in comparison. It would have been a written arrangement, but Michael was too ill to sign the contract and then the contract burst into flames and blew away in the wind. Jermaine isn’t making it up, you know.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of This Is It, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s just one of 200 unreleased Michael Jackson songs that will be released over the course of the next few years. So just 198 stories identical to this and we can all go home.

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