I called my mother in the USA and happened to mention Michael Jackson. ‘Oh him - that weirdo. He’s funny.’ Not funny ha-ha either. So much for American Grassroots Opinion. It is true that Michael Jackson gets more than his share of unsavoury media attention, but it isn’t easy to ignore the tabloid sensationalism of, say, his £90,000 pressurised oxygen chamber which may help him live to the age of 150. This kind of press leads the public into thinking that even if all this consummate weirdness is not true, he must be strange in some (possibly worse?) way to generate such stories. Even as Jackson’s image is ubiquitous, he is jealous of his privacy. We know who he is but not what he is like.

Jackson’s autobiography, Moonwalk, is here to serve the double purpose of showing that he is a nice guy and not weird at all, while refreshing the public palate fully jaded with the records, skinny-legged dancing and designer sweat. While Moonwalk does not confirm, much less mention, most of the eerie