Last night Dutch channel Yorin broadcast the much talked about documentary ‘Living With Michael Jackson’. A rare glimpse into Michael’s life both at his North Californian ranch / amusement park, Neverland, in a mannequin-filled suite in a Las Vegas hotel and during his disastrous trip to Berlin last year.

Although it’s shocking to see his cosmetically sculptured face so close up for so long during the interviews, he comes across at first as a perfectly amicable, if not a slightly strange man. He speaks frankly about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father during his childhood and relates how the Jackson 5 were made to rehearse their dance steps with their father hovering nearby, brandishing a leather belt, ready to whip the first boy to put a foot wrong. But we knew all that already, didn’t we?Personally it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Michael Jackson is a little strange having led the life he has. When he goes on a shopping spree at a hugely kitsch Faberg’-meets-Louis-XIV type shop in a Vegas mall, the massive crowd gathering at the window taking snapshots and fainting at the sight of the Prince of Pop is even more disturbing than the casual $3 million he spends on horrendous artefacts. He cannot go out in public anywhere without getting seriously mobbed. What a nightmare! But he also seems to love the adoration too.

He doesn’t want the media to get pictures of his children’s faces so he resorts to making them wear party-masks or netting over their faces when out in public. The baby he (in)famously dangled over a Berlin balcony was also covered in mesh-netting. His relationship with the mother(s) of the children is apparently a business deal in which he gets full custody and the mothers stay away. Whether all this is in the best interests of the children doesn’t seem to cross his mind. When they almost get stampeded to death by fans and paparazzi at Berlin Zoo he flippantly comments that they’re used ot it and have been since birth.

Eventually the (privileged) journalist making the documentary, Martin Bashir, asks more painful questions about Jackson’s plastic surgery and his passion for children in his bedroom. Jackson vehemently denies ever having had any plastic surgery on his face, except for 2 operations on his nose.

Bashir: So you’ve had 2 operations?
MJ: Erm…. yes… if I remember correctly

Hmmm… if it gets so far that you can’t exactly remember the number of operations you’ve had on your face, it’s usually more than 2. I was disappointed in his obvious dishonesty about his face, but when it came to the subject of having young children over to stay the night at his house I found myself believing him. He makes no secret about the fact that children (aged 12 or thereabouts) regularly come over to his house to visit and play on the Neverland attractions and even that they stay the night and sleep in his bedroom, in his bed. He claims that it’s love and warmth and fun that he shares with the kids and that it has nothing to do with sex at all. Like I said, I believe him. He loves Peter Pan, is still a child in almost everything he does and likes playing with his peers.

I did miss any reference to his marriage to Lisa-Marie, though. She certainly wasn’t meant to be a surrogate mother, so what was the deal with that?