Matt Jones

Thriller

I admit it, I was glued to Martin Bashir’s documentary ‘Living with Michael Jackson’ aired on ITV1 on Monday. It was 110 minutes of sensationalist documentary making at its very worst. On the one side you’ve got Bashir, whose focus was purely on rooting around for scandal in Jackson’s words. Then there’s the pitiful Jackson himself; seemingly scarred from a life of fame, stuck in Neverland, a child bringing up his own masked children. The documentary was billed as being about the ‘real’ Michael Jackson, but really its sole aim was to keep you watching by rolling out a series of increasingly scandalous revelations. It appears that there is no longer a real Michael Jackson; his life is the camera, the printed tabloid page, the mask set up infront of the lighting rig. The sad thing is that behind it all is the person who made some great records, whose talent has been completely overshadowed by the media frenzy that surrounds him.