To the vast majority of the bazillion or so people who bought Thriller or danced to ‘Billie Jean’, Michael Jackson wasn’t quite real. He was more a combination of sine waves, a hologram, an avatar, and in his later days, an object of ridicule and a caution. For those of us too long in the tooth and with better things to do than affect residual or abstract grief for a distant star, it was tempting to react to reports of the 50-year-old’s death from a heart attack last Thursday – on the eve of a mammoth sell-out comeback tour – with the detachment of the professional obit writer whose first response is to calculate word count and column inches. We’re affected sure, but through a gauze, like witnessing the tragic end of the flawed hero in a film. We might shake our heads or tut-tut or even shed a tear, but we get to walk away pretty much unscathed.