London Film Festival: Ralph Steadman Update

I promised to notify you as soon as my interview with Ralph Steadman was published. Here it is as it appeared in this week's editions of the Yellow Advertiser - Britain's biggest regional newspaper series. Unless you have a massive screen, you won't be able to read that, though, so click here to read it on the YA website.

Click to enlarge.

The Lost Interview

In September 2010 I received an email from an aspiring writer called Danielle, asking me to take part in a Q&A about journalism ethics and practices. My heavy work load meant that I didn't complete the interview - carried out via correspondence - until June 2011. By that point Danielle was busy with her own journalism degree and publication was delayed a couple of times. Until tonight, I had forgotten about it.

But I just received an email from Danielle to tell me that at long last - almost 18 months after it was completed - our interview has gone live. Looking over it, I had forgotten how much depth I went into for some of the questions - they are like essays on particular areas of journalism ethics.

Amongst many other issues, I talk to her about why objectivity in journalism is actually often a bad thing, the institutional problems which can lead to farcical reporting and the journalists inspired me - and still inspire me - to do what I do.

Click here to read our interview. 

Meeting Michael Bush

Tonight was the official press launch of 'The Collection of Tompkins and Bush: Michael Jackson Wardrobe'. The exhibition - which will run at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford, London, until early next month - features an array of iconic outfits from all of Jackson's world tours as well as his music videos and other public appearances. Each of the costumes on display was designed by Michael Jackson's costume designers of 25 years - Dennis Tompkins and Michael Bush.

This evening I had the great honour of being the first journalist in Britain to be taken on a tour of the exhibition. My tour guide? Michael Bush.

The press launch officially began at 5.30 this evening, but I met Mr Bush outside at 5pm, where I chatted to him for about 15 minutes while we waited for the lights inside the gallery to be switched on. When everything was up and running we continued our interview inside as he led me around his favourite exhibits.

The exhibition, which coincides with the imminent publication of Mr Bush's book 'The King of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson', is definitely an exercise in quality over quantity. The space isn't enormous, but it is teeming with historic designs. You will see the suit Michael Jackson wore for the Smooth Criminal short film. The outfit he wore in the Scream music video. The patented shoes he invented with Bush and Tompkins so he could lean forward 45 degrees live on-stage. The outfit he wore during his 1993 Superbowl performance. The costume he used to open his Bad World Tour. And a whole lot more.

Michael Jackson's Bad Tour costume. Click to enlarge. Photo property of Charles Thomson.

The collection is not complete. Some items displayed at previous incarnations of the exhibition are nowhere to be seen in London. They include Jackson's gold costume from the HIStory World Tour, the suit he wore in 2002 for his last ever live performance in front of an audience and the jacket he wore in his Leave Me Alone music video. Also missing are various signed sketches demonstrating Jackson's involvement in the design process.

This could be because the collection has been split. According to the tour schedule, it opens in Tokyo before it closes in London - so it follows that the missing items are probably on their way to Japan. That said, I've been told that some items will be switched over on October 14th to change things up, so perhaps these missing items will manifest themselves then.

After Tokyo, the collection will go on display in Los Angeles. Then, across three days in November and December, the items will be auctioned off. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to charity. Mr Bush explained to me his decision to sell off the items in our interview, which will be published next week.

Our discussion ranged from how certain costumes were conceived and created to why Michael Jackson took such a long break from touring between 1997 and 2009. Mr Bush also spoke to me about his work on This Is It in the months before Jackson passed away and, at one point, became choked up as he explained how the death of his partner Dennis Tompkins last December reaffirmed his decision to write the book and take the costumes around the world.

As soon as the interview is published, I will post it here.

Charles Thomson and Michael Bush pose in front of two of Michael Jackson's Bad Tour jackets. Click to enlarge. Photo property of Charles Thomson.

Access Privé: An Update

My appearance on Access Privé, a French news and current affairs show, aired a couple of days earlier than I had anticipated. I got a few messages on twitter from people saying they'd seen it go out on TV station M6 on Saturday afternoon. Apologies for not letting you know in advance - I thought it was set to air on Monday.

The interview was filmed on Thursday, June 7th, at the Millennium Hotel in Knightsbridge. All I really knew at the time was that the show was intended to mark three years since Michael Jackson's death and would focus on the extent of Conrad Murray's culpability.

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I was concerned about how it would turn out for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I was rather unwell at the time. My voice just about held out for the duration of filming. I think my illness is evident when you watch the report. I look rather clammy and tired. I'd also been rained on while on my way to the recording! But c'est la vie.

Secondly, I was worried because the interviewer, Amal El Hachimi, kept asking me about individual people and whether I thought they were culpable in Michael Jackson's death. I had never been involved in this sort of show before and I was concerned that if the editing made it look like I'd answered affirmatively, I could have found myself in a very precarious legal situation!

As it turned out, the direction of the report changed somewhat after Spica Productions TV - the production company behind Access Privé - was told by M6 that it had to tone down any suggestion that Jackson's death was linked to stress caused by rehearsals for his This Is It concerts. This decision was taken because M6 had recently acquired the rights to screen the movie This Is It.

I knew in advance that one of the show's other interviewees was Frank Cascio, but didn't know until I watched it that it also included contributions from Matt Fiddes and Dr Drew. Not the best company to find onself in, some might say, but I have no idea what any of them said because they were all dubbed over by French voice-over artists.

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As far as I could make out, I was quoted on Michael Jackson's admission in 1993 that he had developed a painkiller dependency, what my personal interpretation was of the song Morphine, and what I thought about Michael Jackson's condition during the This Is It rehearsals.

My cumulative screentime was something in the region of about two minutes, if that, edited from an hour-long interview. My main concern had been that in cutting sixty minutes down to two, it would have been very easy to misrepresent me, even if unintentionally. Thankfully, it doesn't look like that happened.

Although M6 sent down the order that Spica Production TV should tone down any suggestions that Jackson's death was brought on by his concert rehearsals, journalist Marie Juteau - who had overall responsibility for the report - told me that she refused to cut out a segment about an email This Is It director Kenny Ortega sent to concert promoter Randy Phillips during the rehearsal period. The email was read out during Conrad Murray's manslaughter trial.

In the email, Ortega told Phillips that at rehearsals Jackson was like a 'lost boy'. He said Jackson was 'trembling, rambling and obsessing'. He told Phillips that Jackson should be psychologically evaluated, mentioned 'pulling the plug' and said that those involved had tried using 'tough love' on Jackson but it had not worked. In the final Access Privé report, I was shown speaking about the email and Marie included footage from Murray's trial of Ortega reading it aloud in court.

Besides that, not much to report. This was really just an update to explain why I didn't let people know in advance that it was going to air on Saturday.

Meeting Michael Barrymore

On Monday I was dispatched to interview Michael Barrymore, who was in town to record a guest slot for the local radio station. The station owners had told me Barrymore had agreed to be interviewed, but on the condition that his past not be discussed.

For international readers: Michael Barrymore, throughout the 1990s, was probably the biggest television star in the UK. Dubbed 'Mr Saturday Night', he hosted everything from variety showcases to game shows to kids' TV. Then, in 2001, a man called Stuart Lubbock was found dead in Barrymore's swimming pool after a party. He had drugs in his system and the coroner later found extensive anal injuries, although there is some question as to how and when those were sustained.

DNA ruled Barrymore out of the assault but the scandal ruined his career. He has spent more than ten years now trying to put the incident behind him. In 2006 he almost mounted a successful comeback by appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. The public seemed to embrace him - he came second on public votes - but while many of the viewers at home were willing to let go of the past, the media wasn't. Everywhere Barrymore goes, he is followed by unpleasant tabloid innuendo - something most broadcasters are unwilling to associate themselves with.

What happened to Stuart Lubbock will probably never be known and opinion on Barrymore will forever be divided by the incident. Some people believe he is holding back information, protecting somebody - but I didn't walk into the interview hoping to interrogate him about it. Many have tried and they've all failed to produce the career-making smoking gun they're looking for. If anything, the more people probe the incident, the more questions seem to arise - so grilling him about his past would probably have been somewhat of a wild goose chase.

I was interested in Barrymore's life now. Is he following the Leveson inquiry? What does he make of it? Does he feel his treatment has been symptomatic of the widespread media misbehaviour which is now being uncovered on a weekly basis? How do people react to him now? How does he deal with people's hostility? These were just some of the questions I'd have liked to put to him.

Alas, when I arrived at the radio studio, Barrymore denied having ever agreed to give me an interview in the first place - something I never quite got to the bottom of - but he did agree to let me sit in on the radio recording.

Halfway through the show, during a music break, he invited me to sit next to him. Then, once recording resumed, he began grilling me about my job. He made a running joke about having turned the tables to interview me. Our interaction dominated the second half of the show.

My take on the encounter has been published in my regional newspaper (see below). I will post details on how to tune into the show as I find them out. It'll be interesting to see how much they have to cut out. I have an unedited copy and it's a great listen.

CLICK HERE to read about my thwarted attempt to interview Michael Barrymore

Michael Barrymore looks suspiciously at our photographer. Picture: Mark Cleveland, Yellow Advertiser

Jermaine Jackson: Audio Extracts

I will be posting a few audio extracts from my interview with Jermaine Jackson over the coming days. Some will be of segments which were included in the final article, some will be outtakes which had to be cut to keep the word limit down.

I will post blog updates each time a new clip is uploaded. I will also alert readers via my Twitter page and my Facebook page.

Here is the first clip, in which Jermaine discusses media manipulation, the famous 'pyjama day' during his brother's 2005 trial, what Michael would think of his children's increasingly public profile and Jermaine's thoughts on the controversial Cardiff tribute concert.

Jermaine Jackson: An Update

Regular readers will remember that back in October I posted about the first installment of my Jermaine Jackson interview being published on the Huffington Post. I said that when the next installment went live, I'd blog again. The next installment never went live and so I never published a follow-up blog.

This was because of a peculiarity at the Huffington Post. They published part one without question but, after taking more than a week to process part two, emailed to tell me that they had decided not to run it. They gave no explanation and when I emailed them to ask for one, I never received a reply.

About a week later, a fellow Huffington Post blogger attempted to upload a piece about Michael Jackson and got the same response. It took ages to process and was then rejected. When they asked why, they too received no reply.

I have no idea why those decisions were taken, or whether there were anymore. Maybe the editors just had an influx of blogs all uploaded at the time. Maybe they felt the site was too saturated with Jackson-related content given that Conrad Murray's trial was generating daily headlines at the time. Still, though, it wouldn't have hurt to tap out a one or two line email explaining that. Perhaps it was none of the above. Perhaps other forces were at work. In all likelihood, we'll never know.

I sat on the Jermaine interview for several months until my friend Roman emailed me about a new publication he'd launched - The Orchard Times. I offered him the Jermaine piece and he jumped on it.

The delay had its up-sides. Since its AOL takeover, the Huffington Post has introduced a slightly maddening word limit on each entry, which meant I had to chop the interview up into several themed chunks. At the Orchard Times, I was able to post it as a single, flowing piece.

The other up-side was that I got to publish the piece after the Conrad Murray trial. Before the trial, a lot of what Jermaine said about This Is It rehearsals would have been considered insane by many readers, but testimony during the trial vindicated a lot of his words. I have added a post-script which places Jermaine's comments about This Is It in the context of what was revealed during the trial.

Today marks five months to the day since the interview took place. It's a relief to finally see it online. I hope you all enjoy it.

CLICK HERE to read the interview at The Orchard Times

Jermaine Jackson Interview

On Saturday 10th September, Jermaine Jackson unwittingly provoked a media storm. He was on the promotional trail for his new book when a news story misquoting a section of the prologue was duplicated hundreds of times around the world, sparking a huge backlash against the memoir.

The story wrongly claimed that had Michael Jackson been convicted of child molestation in 2005, his family had an escape plan in place to whisk him to Bahrain, where he couldn't be extradited. The story was controversial and nonsensical. It was also untrue.

Wherever the story originated, the journalist responsible was apparently too lazy even to read Jermaine's eight-and-a-half page prologue in full before they wrote it up. Then, several hundred more journalists replicated that story without making any attempt to fact-check it. The furore was such that Michael Jackson's 2005 lawyer Thomas Mesereau publicly spoke out against the claims.

For Jermaine Jackson, watching his book misquoted on a global scale and seeing himself criticised over a story he never wrote was a disaster. He was marketing his book as an honest firsthand account of his brother's life, but it had scarcely hit shelves before it was made to look like a work of fiction.

It was amidst this controversy that Jermaine Jackson flew to London to promote the book - a trip I didn't find out about until he was already on his way here.

Arranging an interview slot involved three days of negotiation between Jermaine, his publicist and representatives of his publishing house on both sides of the Atlantic. In the meantime, though, I got a brief private introduction 'backstage' at his London book signing on Tuesday 13th September.


During our meeting, Jermaine thanked me for my work on his brother's trial and we spoke about his trip to the UK so far. He also reminisced about the Victory album when my friend Angela (above, left) handed him a copy to sign.


On the Wednesday evening, waiting to hear confirmation of my interview slot, I tripped over in my local park and landed with my hand in a patch of broken glass. On route to A&E, I learned that I would interview Jermaine Jackson the following day at the BBC studios.

On the afternoon of Thursday 15th, Jermaine's car picked me up in Wood Lane and delivered us all to the BBC studios. Now on his fourth consecutive day of back-to-back interviews in London, he'd just finished recording Loose Women and was at the BBC studios to be interviewed by Richard Bacon.

We were taken to an empty radio studio where Jermaine and I spoke for over half an hour about the backlash against his book, his family's struggle against biased reporting, how they coped with his brother's child molestation trial, and how racism affected the family both during the Jackson 5 days and in later life.

We discussed how he felt about the decision to put his brother's children onstage at the upcoming tribute concert in Cardiff (which happened on Oct 8th), his annoyance at the Los Angeles justice system's obsession with holidays, and the shocking content in chapter 22 of his book, which recounts his sources' recollections of the 'This Is It' rehearsals.

And we discussed a whole lot more, too.

Before I left, we snapped a picture - me sporting a hospital dressing on my right hand. Here we are in the empty radio studio:


Shortly after our BBC studios interview, Jermaine was generous enough to answer several more questions via email correspondence. I have woven those quotes into my article alongside the quotes from our in-person encounter, because it is too jarring and wastes too many words to keep differentiating between the two. My interview with Jermaine will be serialised on the Huffington Post. Part one is now online (link below). Keep checking the blog and my twitter page for updates on future installations.

--Click here to read Part One of my
Exclusive Interview with Jermaine Jackson--

VIDEO: Thomas Mesereau Interview

On Friday evening I was contacted by a fan-site called Positively Michael who had organised a podcast with Thomas Mesereau, the lawyer who secured Michael Jackson's acquittal in his 2005 child molestation trial. The following day, Mr Mesereau was scheduled to spend an hour answering questions from specially invited contributors, and I was the only journalist to receive an invitation.

I've been covering the Michael Jackson story for four years now. My first published article on the subject of Michael Jackson's trial was in 2008, when I interviewed Aphrodite Jones about her book 'Michael Jackson Conspiracy'.

Aphrodite was one of the handful of journalists allowed inside the courtroom for every day of Michael Jackson's 2005 trial. After his acquittal, she decided to write a book about how she'd witnessed firsthand the media's intentional misrepresentation of the evidence and testimony in the case. But despite having seven previous New York Times bestselling books under her belt, no publisher would touch the manuscript. They weren't interested in any pro-Jackson material.

When Aphrodite self-published the book, I decided to interview her. Our interview was published in a small, short-lived magazine called 'Deadline' and Aphrodite described it as the best article she'd ever seen written about her work.

In May of the following year, the media's misrepresentation of the Michael Jackson trial formed a key part of the introduction to my self-published music magazine 'JIVE' and since Michael Jackson's death, my work on his trial has been published by Sawf News and the Huffington Post. So when I was presented with the opportunity to interview Thomas Mesereau on-air, however briefly, I couldn't say no.

During our conversation, Mr Mesereau spoke about the media's skewed coverage of the trial, why particular pundits are still bitter about the verdict, the peculiar closeness between the prosecutors and their witnesses, and why he felt Michael Jackson would be abused by prison guards and die in jail if he was convicted.

Here is the audio of our ten-minute exchange:



Click here to download the entire podcast, free of charge, from iTunes.

VIDEO: Sky News

Here is a clip of my appearance on Sky News on the morning of Saturday 8th October, which I wrote about in my last blog entry.

Sky News

On June 25th 2009, in the hours after Michael Jackson passed away, I was contacted by several rolling news channels who wanted to interview a 'Jackson expert' live on-air. By the morning of June 26th, I had appeared via telephone on BBC News 24, BBC World Service and Sky News.

Since then I hadn't heard much from any of them - perhaps because in the weeks after Jackson's death I declined a few appearances - but this Friday I received a surprise phone call from Sky News, looking for somebody to appear on-air the following morning and chat about Saturday's 'Forever Michael' tribute concert in Cardiff.


It was a brief appearance but fairly successful for a first ever live TV studio interview, by which I mean it was uneventful; I didn't faint, freeze up or barf into the host's lap. Although I did get home later one and notice this:


Did you spot that?

I'll zoom in.


Yes, Sky News became the latest in a long line of media organisations to misspell my name. But never mind. As live TV goes, it's a minor complaint.

I was blindsided by a few questions on Paul McCartney's wedding, about which I knew nothing except what I'd briefly read on the front page of the Mirror in the Sky News green room ten minutes previously. Fortunately, the McCartney questions weren't too probing. I think I got away with it.



I will post video of my appearance shortly.

Exposing the Lies of Conspiracy Bloggers

As I mentioned in a blog entry earlier today, on Friday evening I was invited onto Blog Talk Radio to be interviewed about my reporting on Kelvin MacKenzie's recent diatribe against Michael Jackson's children on British TV.

During the half-hour interview a number of other subjects were covered, including the release of the new Michael Jackson album and the campaign waged against me this summer by conspiracy bloggers. The latter discussion appears to have provoked the ire of one such conspiracy blogger, whose latest entry is a frenzied rant about my appearance on the broadcast.

During the last five months or so I have become accustomed to seeing harebrained blog entries written about me and have mostly managed to abstain from responding to them, but this one caught my attention because the blogger in question - Bonnie Cox - told some pretty sizable porkies, including a couple about the content of her own blogs.

During my interview on Blog Talk Radio I discussed two of the accusations that Bonnie had made about me in the past few months; namely that I was involved in a plot with John Branca and that somebody had hired me to attack AEG.

Bizarrely, Cox took to her blog this weekend to deny ever making either of those accusations, apparently forgetting that the original accusations were still on her blog for anybody and everybody to read.

Here's Cox in her latest blog entry, denying that she ever accused me of being involved in a plot with John Branca:

And yet here she is the previous month, blatantly accusing me of being involved in a 'buddy-buddy three-some' with John Branca and Randy Taraborrelli, 'getting along on MJ's wallet, name, blood, sweat and tears':



Back-pedal, or amnesia? You be the judge.

Similarly, here's Bonnie in her latest entry claiming that she didn't accuse me of being hired to attack AEG:



No Bonnie, it wasn't Muzik, it was you. Look:



Jog any memories?

During my discussion with the hosts about conspiracy bloggers and their methods, I mentioned how these bloggers totally dismiss any evidence which contradicts their pre-determined conclusions. I used the example of bloggers who constantly claim that I didn't write positively about Michael Jackson until after he died, even though a fifteen second visit to my website will show that I've been writing pro-Jackson articles for several years.

Did Bonnie take this opportunity to 'fess up to her deception? No. She logged straight into her blog and repeated the exact claim that I'd just debunked:


Her comment is a lie. Simple as that. The first time I was ever paid for a story about Michael Jackson was in March 2009 when I was contacted by a member of MJ's camp and specifically asked to leak information on his trip to London, in order to create hype around his impending concert announcement. Prior to that my only work on Michael Jackson was largely very sympathetic and was written pro bono, such as my 2008 interview with Aphrodite Jones about her book 'Michael Jackson Conspiracy'.

Any claim that I was paid for anything Jackson-related before March 2009 is a lie and any claim that I didn't support Jackson before he died is also a lie.

In her new blog entry, Bonnie once more utilises the exact tactic that I described in my radio interview, telling her readers a half-truth and filling in the gaps with pure fantasy. She mentions my 2007 article about the album 'Thriller 25' and claims that it is proof of a pre-existing relationship between myself and Sony:

Firstly, Bonnie is a liar. I did not interview Sony's 'marketing head honcho'. I interviewed a member of Sony's catalogue release department marketing team. On top of this outright lie, she omits important information with the specific intention of misrepresenting my interaction with Sony.

What Bonnie doesn't tell you is that I was dispatched to Sony HQ in December 2007 by a fansite. Like many journalism students, I used to write for free for fansites in order to bolster my portfolio of published work and gain vital interviewing/writing experience.

In other words - as a 19 year old journalism student I interviewed a member of Sony's catalogue release marketing team for a Michael Jackson fansite. This, according to Bonnie, proves that I am a dastardly co-conspirator in an evil Sony plot to murder Michael Jackson.

The other thing Bonnie doesn't tell you is that my review of 'Thriller 25' was negative, not positive, which totally negates any implication that I was somehow acting as an agent of the record company who put it out. I described one of the remixes on the set as sounding like 'a hobo bludgeoning a dwarf with a sack full of windchimes'. In fact, the review was so negative that Sony complained about me in writing and issued me with a lifelong ban from their catalogue release department.

The latest blog from Bonnie is, essentially, just more of the usual; another gigantic dose of paranoia with a generous sprinkling of deception. But this time she has been caught out in a series of undeniable lies. She denied writing certain comments about me when those comments were still on her blog in black and white for all to see. In doing so, she has demonstrated just how changeable and unreliable she really is.

In the past it has been pointless to respond to Bonnie's claims because there has been no way to refute them. How can you prove that you haven't done something? If you've been to the Grand Canyon and someone accuses you of lying, you can pull out a photograph. If you haven't been to the Grand Canyon and somebody claims that you have - how can you prove they're lying?

What differentiates Bonnie's latest blog from her previous offerings is that this time she's trapped herself in her own web of deceit. Here, in black and white, are Bonnie's lies for all to see. On one day she'll claim that I'm in cahoots with Branca, on another she'll deny ever saying any such thing. In one entry she'll say I've been hired to attack AEG, in another she'll claim that it wasn't her and that it must have been a different blogger.

Her reader numbers have dwindled significantly since the summer after she embarked on a number of ill-advised campaigns against everybody from make-up artist Karen Faye to a variety of innocent fans. But after this latest embarrassment, it'll be a wonder if she has any readers left at all by the end of the year.

Here's an excerpt from the Blog Talk Radio discussion that caused the controversy:

New Clip: I speak on Blog Talk Radio about the Kelvin MacKenzie debacle

I was invited onto Blog Talk Radio on Friday night to discuss the Kelvin MacKenzie outrage. Here's an extract from my interview.



To receive notices when I upload new clips, you can subscribe to my YouTube Channel. I also post regular updates on my twitter page.

The Interviewer becomes the Interviewee - The Final Instalment

The conclusion of my interview with poet and author Lorette Luzajic has been uploaded. In this segment I discuss the dangers of fanaticism, what I've learnt from being attacked by conspiracy theorists, and my future plans.

Click here to read the final instalment of my exclusive interview with Lorette Luzajic.

The Interviewer becomes the Interviewee - Part Five

The latest instalment of my interview with author Lorette Luzajic has gone online. In this segment I speak about conspiracy theorist bloggers who claim to be conducting 'investigations' but actually ignore facts which disprove their theories and perpetuate lies which have been disproven on numerous occasions.

I also speak about how these conspiracy theorists are preying on vulnerable fans, as well as discussing the overzealousness of some Michael Jackson fans and how politics and in-fighting in Jackson's fan community are having a detrimental effect on his legacy.

Click here to read Part Five of this exclusive serialised interview.

Throughout this interview I have often spoken about conspiracy theorist bloggers, using examples to illustrate how they repeat lies even after they've been repeatedly disproven, and use irrelevant facts to 'prove' absurd theories.

The response of one such blogger, Bonnie Cox, has been to publish even more hilarious fibs. In her latest blog entry she writes: "Now Charles Thomson has been recruited to cut into AEG (he’s out of hiding now, welcome back Charles) as well as Randy Taraborrelli and his trolls being sent to my facebook page."

In another perfect illustration of the very methods I have discussed in my lengthy interview with Lorette Luzajic, Cox claims with no evidence whatsoever that I have come out of 'hiding' after being hired by somebody to slander the concert promotion company AEG.

As far as I can remember, I haven't made any public comment on AEG whatsoever. Moreover, I was never 'in hiding'. Last month I conducted a highly publicised interview with the rapper Cazwell. I have also, in recent weeks, launched a YouTube page.

Cox also used her blog this week to publish some stunning anti-Semitic comments. "Using a jewish slang word in a song that calls attention to the separation of the races and his gets banned?" she wrote. "You know why? You know who's running the the Entertainment industry now, or at least who controls most of it..."

Looks like somebody's been spending too much time on illuminati conspiracy forums - and for somebody who posts so many bible verses on her blog, she doesn't seem to be doing very well on the 'love thy neighbour' front.

The Interviewer becomes the Interviewee - Part Three

Part Three of my in-depth interview with Lorette Luzajic has gone online. In this segment I discuss the bizarre series of events which led conspiracy theorists to accuse me of being involved in Michael Jackson's 'murder'.

Click here to read Part Three of this exclusive serialised interview.

In upcoming segments I will put some of these conspiracy theorists' claims under the microscope, showing how they continue to repeat lies even after they've been proven false and how they take small, innocuous pieces of factual information, then use them to 'prove' grandiose conspiracies.

I will also discuss the demonisation of Randy Taraborrelli, baseless claims that I have an alter-ego called Deborah Ffrench, why air-brushing over Jackson's mistakes actually removes culpability from those who drove him to an early grave and how in-fighting and power politics in Jackson's fan community are tarnishing his legacy.

The Interviewer becomes the Interviewee

I was recently interviewed at length by author Lorette Luzajic about my work on Michael Jackson and my strange experiences with his fans.

During the interview I spoke about how and why I became instrumental in the release of Michael Jackson's FBI files, the peculiar similarities between Jackson's supporters and his detractors and the farcical series of events which led conspiracy theorists to accuse me of assisting in Michael Jackson's murder.

The interview was long and detailed so will be serialised on Lorette's blog over the coming days, a few questions at a time. I will update my blog and my twitter page each time another part of the interview is uploaded.

Click here to read Part One of my brand new interview with Lorette Luzajic.

Earlier this year Lorette interviewed me about my growing fame as a Michael Jackson expert and my take on the allegations made against the star. Click here to read part one of our prior interview, and click here to read part two.