And so to last week’s wholly left-field announcement from the popular singer, dancer and freakshow Michael Jackson. On Thursday the Jackson One — formerly one of the Jackson Five — revealed that, after a difficult few years for public relations in America, he plans to decamp to the UK. Once here, Jackson apparently intends to supervise the building of a new Neverland-style ranch, in Scotland, or maybe Ireland — he hasn’t decided yet. Quite possibly he doesn’t need to. As the original, Californian, Neverland ranch covered more than 2,800 acres and boasted a theme park, zoo, movie theatre and railway, Jackson could simply buy half of Northern Ireland and the southernmost tip of the Mull of Kintyre and run a steam train on a suspension bridge over the Irish Sea to link the two. There’s no point in making enervating choices between land masses when you’re both as rich as Croesus and mad as a bag of hair.
There can’t be many cultural observers who, after the announcement, could claim that they saw Jackson’s sudden Anglo relocation coming. Jackson’s hobbies and interests, in as much as one can be aware of these things, seem primarily to centre around buying wholly repulsive knick-knacks and being friends with Liza Minnelli — both pastimes that, without a shadow of a doubt, mean that America is the place to be. In the US I once saw a real, stuffed armadillo dressed up like a Wild West sheriff, complete with boots and gun, for $50. Britain will never offer that level of intoxicating wrongness. Likewise, La Belle Minnelli’s face is now so wide that it wouldn’t fit through airport security, and as there’s no way Sally Bowles is going to enter a country sideways, I think we can safely assume that she will end her days in California. And who can blame her? There, legions of gay fans work around the clock at quilting parties to make her huge new sequined kaftans, and diamond earrings the size of woks.
Indeed, should one care to consider the matter at all, it’s hard to fathom why Jackson is coming to Britain. I don’t know what kind of country he thinks we’re running here, but as far as we’re concerned, it’s one primarily obsessed with mashed potato, the best route to Guildford avoiding the M25, and Su Doku. He, on the other hand, is a millionaire genius manchild who looks like an albino Peperami, likes to live in a zoo and occasionally manifests biologically tenuous blond offspring out of nowhere. This is the man who wrote the lyric “What about elephants — have we lost their trust?”, presumably meaning that, until recently at least, he believed that humans and elephants were sharing potentially sensitive confidences, working as a tag-team on rock-climbing exercises, and house-sitting for each other on a regular basis. In a country where “Have a nice day!” is said only sarcastically to the backs of departing Americans, I think he may struggle. It’s hard to envisage how his Highlands Neverland — maybe he could name it “Never-High Lands”, to reinforce his notorious antipathy towards street drugs — will come to pass.
For starters, surely putting up a zoo somewhere on the outskirts of Ullapool is as ill-advised as dangling a baby over a balcony. Any interesting animal — the giraffe, the elephant, the miniature antelope the dik-dik — is not going to thrive in a climate where, even on the beach in July, one is never entirely surprised to be pelted with sleet. Likewise Jackson’s funfair. There’s a limit to the amount of “fun” one can have on a Ferris wheel whose summit is regularly occluded by low-lying cloud. To be frank, if Jackson is planning to entertain the legions of terminally ill children that the original Neverland played host to, they wouldn’t survive a weekend of average Scottish bank holiday weather. Jackson would be responsible for hundreds — possibly thousands — of children’s deaths. That’s going to be a negative outcome, PR-wise.
The bottom line is that it’s hard to be a mysterious, fabulous, philanthropic but ultimately creepy manchild in rural Scotland. You simply don’t see many of them dancing down the street in Argyll, or Troon. Scotland is a place for thrilling to the whip-whip-whip of a Gore-Tex coat as you stride across a moor, before a supper of roast parsnips, whisky and bed. Jackson’s unique lifestyle will, one can foresee, be difficult to accommodate. His mask will go soggy in the rain. The harsh gales will ensure that he needs more than just the one glove. The Moon Walk will be problematic in hiking boots and waterproof trousers. If he grabs his crotch and squeals, the locals will simply presume that he has just noticed the loss of his sporran, and will be on their hands and knees in the Ferry Boat Inn trying to find it. Actually, let’s be realistic — they’ll look over the rims of their drinks and say: “Och, look at that — Michael Jackson’s lost his sporran. Hahahaha.”
Should he go through with this move, I imagine him, in two years’ time, sitting glumly on a bench in the rain, staring out from under the dripping hood of his anorak, watching his last pink llama die. “Ben,” he will say to the ghost of his pet rat Ben from the song Ben. “Ben, this Great Scotland idea just hasn’t worked out the way I planned. I think I’m going to have to relocate to somewhere warmer, and drier, and where the locals understand the needs of a truly unique never-ageing star-child like myself. Ben, I’m going to Guernsey.”
Pulling a Cup sickie? Grab the Calpol
Here comes the World Cup. My husband has actually taken a week off work. I, meanwhile, have been recommended — by another mum at school — to take regular sips of Calpol Infant Suspension mixed with red wine, “because you just don’t care about anything once you’re half-way down the glass”.
Personally — although I wish the whole event would fall down a well — I can’t understand why a national holiday isn’t held for key matches in the cup. Let’s face it: half the country will bunk off for them anyway, so why not make it official? And just to ensure sexual equality, the same should be done when any high-end designer (Stella McCartney, Celia Birtwell, Karl Lagerfeld) does a range for Topshop, or H&M, because it always sells out in hours, to bad women pulling sickies.
