Michael Jackson lived a bizarre, complicated life, and it doesn't seem like he'll get any less complex in death.

A lot of people are comparing his death to Elvis', but that seems a bit lazy to me. Elvis was younger, he'd eaten himself half to death anyway, and wasn't marred by half as much controversy as Jacko was over the course of his fifty years. Yes, of course there was the abuse of medication involved in both untimely deaths, but the similarities are not remarkable.

Here's the latest as the world still comes to grips with the death of its most famous entertainer.

Rumours that Michael was not the father of kids Prince and Paris half-heartedly denied by ex-wife Debbie Rowe. More strongly denied, that Rowe wasn't the mother either.

Jackson's dermatologist Dr Arnold Klein (Rowe's boss) fingered by a US tabloid as being the sperm donor parent of Prince and Paris. (Having an artificially inseminated baby with your boss? Awkward!)

Michael's doctor didn't call 911 for half an hour after finding him unresponsive, according to Jackson's lawyer, because he didn't know the singer's address. Then how did he get there?

Fans with tickets to Jackson's London shows will get a refund on their tickets only if they purchased them through an ‘authorised dealer.'

The publicity spokesman for Dr Gunther von Hagens, the creepy looking Polish doctor who preserves corpses through the process of plastination, said someone from Jacko's camp called them several months ago to enquire about him being preserved in plastic. Dr von Hagens is the man behind those amazing exhibitions where skinned bodies jump, leap and are posed in bizarre, if intriguing, ways. Thankfully at the time of his death Michael was not signed up to become one of the doctor's exhibitions.

So many things about Jackson's untimely death bug me. Firstly, how did so many hangers-on manage to use Michael for their own ends? Second, why did his family not do something about his problem with medication sooner? And third, who on earth trusts a doctor called Dr Tohme Tohme? (Michael's longtime pal and so-called manager)

But the vilest person in this whole affair has to be Michael's father Joe. While his mother, Katherine, has stayed silent this week apart from gaining control over his affairs and temporary guardianship of his three children, Joe was out and about on a red carpet three days after his son's death - pimping a new business venture.

Telling a CNN reporter that he was keen to make ‘a real good statement' on the carpet at the BET Awards in Los Angeles, Jackson introduced a pal and declared: "Marshall and I have - we own a record company. Talking about Blu-ray technology. That's the next step."

So it wasn't enough that he bullied and terrorised his son for years on end, leaving him with the fears and problems which he carried through into adulthood and effectively robbing him of a childhood. Since his meal ticket is now gone, Joe Jackson is using the attention to try and make money. The pictures of him strutting around Los Angeles in sunglasses, lapping up the press attention, make me feel queasy.

I guess he's true to form.

Joe Jackson makes Dina Lohan look like the Tooth Fairy of stage parents.

Another sad celeb death back in the headlines

Off the subject of Michael Jackson and on to another complicated, sensitive man who turned to prescription drugs to deal with the fallout from his burgeoning fame.

Unlike Michael, Heath Ledger tried his best to shun the public attention and adoration - but I suppose there's not much you can do when your work starts gathering plenty of industry attention.

Vanity Fair contributing editor Peter Biskind has released an excerpt of the magazine's August cover story on the late Australian actor, The Last of Heath.

Despite rampant and persistent rumours that Ledger was a user of narcotics cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, who was working on Ledger's final film at the time of his death, said the actor didn't drink and was ‘clean as a whistle' after he quit smoking weed.

Pecorini says Ledger "used to smoke marijuana on a regular basis, like probably 50 per cent of Americans...Heath would happily go to the bar, buy a round of drinks for friends, and come back and have a soda or juice, never once drinking alcohol."

I doubt 150 million Americans are smoking weed on a regular basis, you? But I digress!

Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus director and Ledger's pal, Terry Gilliam is interviewed for the piece. He's very frank, and quite revealing about what went on in the last few months of his friend's life.

Chronic insomnia led to the actor taking sleeping medication, and a lack of sleep didn't help when Ledger was afflicted with the early stages of pneumonia while working on Parnassus in London.

His relationship breakup with fiancée Michelle Williams and the threat of thrashing out a custody agreement for their daughter Matilda really hit Heath hard, according to pals.

Director Terry Gilliam tells the mag the couple's relationship began falling apart around the time of the 78th Academy Awards, four months after the 2005 birth of their daughter, Matilda Rose. Ledger was nominated for Best Actor and Williams for Best Supporting Actress for their roles in Brokeback Mountain.

Says the director: "The whole machinery started growing up around them. That was the moment when it changed, when he realized, Uh-oh. We perceive the world differently. He didn't care about things like those awards.

"Because he's a much nicer person than I am, he really thought he could do the right thing. He was trying to be decent and graceful, give her whatever she wanted - the house, every f**king thing. But once it started going south, it went very quickly. He was overwhelmed by lawyers, and there were more and more of them, as if they were breeding. I said ‘This is bullshit. Heath, just end it. Get out - it's bad. You've got to just walk away from it.' The stakes kept going up. He wouldn't listen to any of us."

Despite his misgivings over being part of a ‘summer blockbuster' franchise, Ledger accepted the role of The Joker in Batman flick The Dark Knight.

Says Ledger's agent Steven Alexander: "The dolls and action figures and everything else that comes with one of those movies. He was afraid it would define him and limit his choices."

Then why'd he take the role?

"He was ready to bust out of the gate, but he didn't want to step on the gas and become something that he didn't want to become: a matinee idol. He was a private person, and he didn't want to share his personal history with the press. It just wasn't up for sale.

"That's part of the reason he initially tore down his career. He wasn't motivated by money or stardom, but by the respect of his peers, and for people to walk out of a movie theatre after they'd seen something that he'd worked on and say, ‘Wow, he really disappeared into that character.' He was striving to become an ‘illusionist,' as he called it, able to create characters that weren't there.'

Sounds like a slight touch of wankery to me (just slight!) but if Ledger wanted the respect of his peers he certainly got it with his electrifying performance as the Joker, which won him a posthumous Academy Award.

I watched The Dark Knight again recently, and seeing Heath in action you realise what a waste his death really was - without factoring in an almost four-year-old growing up without a daddy.

Wonder if Heath ever met Johnny Depp? He seems to combine an eclectic, rewarding career with big-screen superstardom as Captain Jack Sparrow, respect from the industry and fans, a happy family life, and, for a superstar, a luxurious amount of privacy. You never see him walking out of Starbucks. And I couldn't even really tell you what his two children look like, remarkable in our instantaneous digital age.

Brit Brit goes brown

On a brief break from her mammoth Circus tour Britney Spears was spotted on the weekend out in Los Angeles with her agent-slash-boyfriend Jason Trawick and a head of long, dark locks.

She looked happy, healthy, and was wearing a diamond ring on her engagement finger.

The mags have been chattering for weeks that Britney and Jason are engaged, but could it really be true. If so, let's just hope Britney's fella paid for the engagement ring himself.

Britney had to buy her own when she got engaged to Kevin Federline in 2004. Bad omen, girl! She should have run for the hills right then.

For the Britney of old, dark hair was an indicator that she was feeling particularly low. On a good day her locks were blonde, and when she was hopping aboard the crazy train the pink wig came out. But no more!

In the days following Michael Jackson's death last week Britney was caught up in a death scare of her own after persons unknown hacked the singer's Twitter account and posted a message that the singer ‘had passed.'

It's not the first time Britter's Twitter has come under attack either. Earlier in the year a rather cheeky hacker Tweeted on the singer's official site "Hi Yall! Brit Brit here, just wanted to update you all on the size of my vagina. Its about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth."

Hee. I know, I'm 30 and still juvenile. There may be no hope.

Britney's world tour resumes this Saturday in Paris, and then heads through Belgium, Scandinavia. Russia and Poland throughout July before dates in Canada and the US through August and September.

She's due in Australia for a string of dates in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth in November - the first time Brit Brit would have ever performed Down Under. Tickets start at AU$120 (not too bad) and go up to AU$220 (pricey but not outrageous).

Could a Britney show tempt you to venture across the Tasman?

Spotted
Eva Longoria Parker leaving Los Angeles' Café Med after a midweek lunch with pals...Robert Pattinson filming his new movie Remember Me in NYC...Helen Hunt surfing in Hawaii...Mariah Carey dressed in drag outside New York's Plaza Hotel filming her new music video ‘Obsessed'...Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard at the European premiere of their new film Public Enemies in London...Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick on set for the first day's filming of the third series of Gossip Girl...Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott taking kids Liam and Stella to the beach in Malibu...

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