Lenny Henry, comedian

When my phone started buzzing last night every ten seconds or so with messages from friends from Bilston to Los Angeles to Shepherd’s Bush to Brooklyn to Sydney, Australia, to Brierley Hill, I knew something big was kicking off — they all said variations on the same thing: is Michael Jackson Dead? Some geezer on TMZ (whatever that is) is claiming that it’s true?

So what do you do at this point? Well first I watched the news — I read text messages from my brother in Ireland, my wife in Australia, various friends from all over the shop — all repeating this terrible message — and I turned on the TV and at first it was all Wimbledon, the credit crunch, Glastonbury and the rain — and then suddenly a very grim-looking bloke reporting from LA, images of ambulances racing to a hospital and finally, Jermaine Jackson making a statement ,that his beloved bro was no longer with us.

You fire up iTunes and make a playlist — I’m sure if you’re a fan that you probably did the same thing — I made a playlist like this: I Want You Back, Who’s Lovin’ You, ABC, Billie Jean, Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, Bad, Thriller, Show You The Way to Go, Can you Feel It, Jam, Remember the Time, You Haven’t Done Nothin’ by Stevie Wonder (the J5 sing backing vocals), State of Shock, She’s Out Of My Life, Smooth Criminal.

Then for fun I started thinking about all the people who'd done impressions of Michael over the years; basically everyone! The best impression of Michael I think, even though Weird Al Yankovic’s Eat It is up there, and Eddie Griffin’s take on a “high on cocaine” Michael goin’ crazy in the rumpus room at Neverland is hilariously profane, nasty and strange — the best impression has to be Eddie Murphy’s, as featured in the Delirious DVD — Eddie’s vocal impersonation of Michael is extraordinary and very funny.

Not sure about Eddie Large doing Beat It on the Little and Large show though (remember that?). When I first saw the Thriller video I was working at Radio 1 doing a show called The Sunday Hoot with a producer called Dave Atkey. Somehow he’d managed to get hold of an advance copy of Thriller and we watched it about 28 times in his office. My thought as I was watching this amazing piece of work was, “I’ve got to do this!” Luckily The Lenny Henry Show was going into pre-production with a great director called Geoff Posner, who rang me that very night to say, “Have you seen the new Michael Jackson video? We’ve got to do that!” and sure enough with a bit of elbow grease and brainstorming and Peter Brewis doing the music and me and Kim Fuller trying to find rhymes for “Thinner”, which included “I can’t eat my dinner” and “those zombies look like fans of Aston Villa”, we finished work on our parody, which finished the first episode of The Lenny Henry Show and got us nominated for a Bafta award.

What I remember about rehearsing for the video with choreographers and dancers and all the malarky that goes with that was just how uncoordinated I was — how ungraceless I was . . . sure I could do the jokes . . . the silly moves, chopping a zombies head off accidentally — all that . . . but I couldn’t actually dance or sing like Michael. I could do signature moves, signature vocal yelps . . . just enough to get by. But when you get out there to do your thing, you realise . . . My God, imagine doing this for real — he must be really, really talented. And that’s what I thought at the end of the incredibly long filming session that we did. My goodness, imagine being Michael and being able to sing and dance and endure all that make-up and prosthetic work and perform at 150 per cent. He is awesome.

I wasn’t so much taking the mick, although there was an element of that. It was more an homage to one of the greatest talents of the 20th century. When an icon falls like this all kind of tributes fly from the mouths of pundits , journalists and fan boys and girls like ‘We shall never see his like again’ and ‘Heaven has received another angel’ — but the only thing you need to do is quote statistics. For Thriller, Bad, Dangerous,Off the Wall — google ’em, go on. Watch the video of the Motown 25th anniversary again and marvel at the moonwalk . . . watch the video of Billie Jean, or Thriller, or Bad. I will watch that video on YouTube — you know the one, he’s in the purple pimp hat, the fronded waistcoat, the flowery shirt — and he sings Smokey Robinson’s Who’s Lovin’ You and the crowd go wild. It's the most exciting TV clip you’ve ever seen.

The fact that his O2 shows sold out within hours is a testament to his staying power, his almost bullet-proof reputation as an entertainer. Many fans would take a slightly poorly and frail Michael rather than have no Michael at all — so even though there were rumours that he might use lookalikes, he might not do very long , he might have a lot of stuff on video, “It’s all gonna be done with sock puppets”, “He’s performing the whole thing from a sick bed”, the fans’ view was: “I’ll pay money to see that — the boy’s a genius!”

We’re gonna miss you Michael. We loved your strange, bony, talented, moonwalking, monkey- owning, amusement park livin’, crotch grabbin’ , high voice yelping, brilliant video makin’, Elizabeth Taylor lovin’, body poppin’, prodigiously talented legendary ass.

Michael Jackson died. Damn. R.I.P.

Lenny Henry, 9.30 am, Friday 26/06/09, devastated, sad and bereft — imagine a world without Michael Jackson . . . I’m gonna play some records again.

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