Momento

Like just about everyone else, I guess I should talk about MJ. Michael. Michael Jackson. Whakko. Whatever.

The outpourings from the British media has revisited the hysteria not seen since Diana died. Is it a little over the top? I think so.

We will always have the music, of course. And we were told by his fans, his friends to remember that. But it is impossible to separate the musician from the social retard, the freak, that was Michael off stage and out of the studio.

I did meet Michael once. I say met him, I was in the same building as me; Wembley. And there some 72,000 others he met on that evening in 1988. I had liked the lead off single from Bad; The Way You Make Me Feel was a joyous, wonderful song, full of swagger. Sadly, in my view, the rest of the record tanked.

But, five of us from the chicken factory had got tickets and so set off for North West London in my car for a day in the presence of a superstar. We were there so darn early; we queued up in the hot sun.

We waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Then the doors opened and we found ok seats.

And waited.

I can't remember who the support was, but the fact I can't remember now who it was says they were not good. Jackson came on early evening, dressed in what looked like leather bondage trousers and whooped and grabbed his crotch and went Awwww! Like all the time.

The really odd stories had yet to come out, but even then we realised that he wasn't like other boys. He was asexual to the max, and to see him singing about love and sex, grabbing the crotch and all that, it was quite sad.

We got bored.

We decided to leave and get an early tube back to where we had left the car. As we walked down Wembley Way, The Way You Make Me Feel rang out. I couldn't care less. I really think the music was average at best, and no matter how many dance routines could hide that.

I sold the few records of his I had and moved on.

Fast forward a few years to my second marriage, and Estelle's son liked Earth Song, and Estelle thought it a good idea to buy HIStory for him. By new the child abuse stories had come out, and I felt uncomfortable.

He was due to appear at the Brit awards with a whole truckload of kids to perform. It took a drunk thin man from Sheffield to waggle his bum in Michael's direction for the whole pomposity of it all to burst. I don't think Michael really got over that, to find that people really didn't think he was the King of Pop; not even a Prince, but a joke, and probably a sick one at that.

That he is called the King of Pop is that he wanted to be called that, and got the BBC to agree to call him that in return for letting them show the video to Black or White.

Sadly, the BBC agreed.

And of course the irony that a song calling for the differences between the races was being sung by someone who had changed from being a fine looking young black man to someone looking like an old white woman.

The hits dried up, and the weirdness grew. He got married; the Elvis' daughter, of course. Who else would he marry? Oh yeah, a nurse from Australia. And then the children arrived. Prince Michael, Paris and Prince Michael 2. He dressed them in uniforms with face masks, and we thought it normal. Or some did. I think child services should have been called in. He dangled his youngest child over the balcony of a hotel; he thought that fine.

And now, or three months ago, he announced he was to play 10 concerts in London. 20 concerts. 30. 40. 50. I said at the time one of them would never happen. Sometimes I hate being right.

For a decade, Michael was the biggest thing in music, but in the end he ran out of things to write about because if he he wrote about what he knew, then it would be admitting he was not in the same world as us. In every sense of the word.

Last night we sat down to watch Bruce Springsteen play live from Glastonbury. H and the E Street Band played for nearly three hours with no song and dance routines, no change of costume, no soaring into the air on a jet pack. Just music and sheer delight to be doing it. We loved it. And so did the crowd. Bruce has been doing this since the early 70s, and still lives on this planet.

Michael hopefully has gone to a better place, but to my mind he treated those who loved him quite badly; no tour in 12 years, and recent appearances resulting in just two lines sung from We Are the World. Give me Bruce.