I don’t really know what to say. I am a fan who loved his music but I didn’t know the man, I doubt many really did, despite all the talking heads appearing non-stop on the news channels over the last 24 hours.

Where were these people when he really needed them?

Rewind a few years and it would have done him and his reputation the world of good to have his fellow musicians and celebrities saying a few good words about him, but when the mud was flying about they kept their heads down - no wonder worried more about some of it sticking to them for being associated with him.

Now he is dead though, all bets are off and the rush to appear onscreen has begun.

Most are commenting on the shock of it all, and I’d have to agree. How can Michael Jackson be dead?

Despite the rumours, I was sure that at some point last night the news people were going to announce that rumour was all it had been and he was alive and well.

That announcement never came and so instead we await the coroner’s autopsy report to see what put an end to Jacko’s life.

50 is no age to be dying at - especially unexpectedly without any apparent longterm illness. Well, there have been rumours about him having practically every disease under the sun but I think this is the usual tabloid nonsense - if they don’t have any story about him they just make something up, and it has been ever thus.

He has been involved in some of the most sensational stories ever printed - from living with his chimp, Bubbles, to sleeping in an oxygen chamber and all the furore over the plastic surgery, he was never far from the news.

As far as the weirdest stories are concerned, these would appear to have actually been instigated by Michael himself with his people leaking them to the media just as a bit of fun and to ultimately keep his face on the cover of as many newspapers and magazines as possible.

With the plastic surgery, a lot of people took exception to the fact that his appearance changed so dramatically over the years. The most obvious change is to his skin colour which some claim he had done so that he would appeal to a wider audience, but I believe that to be nonsense. He claims he had a disease which altered the pigmentation of his skin, leaving him patchy so instead of that he had some form of treatment to effectively even out the colour so it was all the same shade. Truth or fiction, perhaps we will find out one day.

As for his facial features, he had a couple of contributing factors to his changing appearance. Firstly he was well known from a very young age, and like most of us he changed as he grew up - yet people still expected him to look as he did when he was a child. Secondly, he looked like his father - which in his mind was a bad thing. His dad, Joseph Jackson, beat him when he was a child and the last person Michael wanted to see when he looked in the mirror was his dad looking back at him - also his dad would taunt him about his looks growing up and when the day came that he could do something about it, he jumped at the chance. And I for one don’t blame him.

It’s not something I would consider doing, but I thankfully didn’t have the upbringing he had and at the end of the day it affected noone but himself so it’s none of my business what he wanted to spend his money on.

The three kids he leaves behind are the ones who deserve the majority of our sympathy. When he announced he was to be a father, I was a bit bemused as to how he would get on but his spell away from the limelight would appear to have resulted in him devoting his 100% attention on his children’s upbringing. He tried to keep them away from the spotlight as much as possible, shielding their faces in public. There was no way they could have a normal life, no matter how much their father wanted that but he appears to have been doing his best by them.

Unfotunately, they will have to continue their path through life without him.

There have been so many controversies over the years and these will linger in the mind for a while yet, but ultimately fade away leaving only the music - his gift to us all which will last forever more.