You can look, but you’d better not touch

Originally published in Hot Press Volume 12, Issue 15, 1988
(For more from the Hot Press archives, see our Michael Jackson cover features from 1987 and 1984)

It must have seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, to someone. I mean, what do you do when your editorial assignment is to try and talk to one of the most elusive individuals on earth? Michael Jackson is in town, he’s playing 11 sold-out dates at Britain’s largest outdoor venues before 794,000 people, he’s grossing £10 million just on this one leg of his world tour, he’s the most popular performer in pop, one of the most famous faces on the planet, the biggest story going right now… and he’s not talking. To anyone.

Michael Jackson doesn’t talk to the press, won’t say a word on TV, not so much as a ‘how do you do?’ for all his radio listeners out there. Representatives of his British record company couldn’t get to meet him, Kim Wilde, his support act on his European tour confessed that after six weeks on the road together she had yet to be introduced, hell, there was just no way he was going to talk to a reporter from the Daily Mail. So why not send along... a chimp?

Well why not? Michael Jackson talked to animals, didn’t he? He had a goddamn menagerie at home, a snake, a llama, a tarantula and most important, a chimpanzee called Bubbles. And Michael and Bubbles were this close, as the gossip papers had been at pains to point out, as the Daily Mail itself had divulged. This was one of the great romances, Michael went nowhere without his chimp chum, he had clothes tailor-made for him, he bought him jewellery, he had left him a fortune in his will, they were inseparable... until British quarantine regulations came between them. Bubbles hadn’t been allowed into the country. Michael was companionless, chimp free... perhaps this was his Achilles heel.

So that was how Baz Bambigoye, Chief Showbiz Writer at the Daily Mail came to find himself smuggling a chimpanzee named O’Flynn from Twycross Zoo into a room on the first floor of the exclusive Mayfair Hotel in London’s West End. Jackson and his large entourage were installed on the 7th floor and nobody got up there without the right passes. Burly blue-shirted minders stood outside the lift and stair doors to greet any interlopers.

“You’re not a guest on this floor”, they would inform anyone who tried to make an unscheduled visit. “What we’re saying is that you’re not a guest on this floor and we don’t want you on this floor. Now, we’re saying it nicely, OK?” Once you had heard them say it nicely, you really didn’t want to hear them say it nastily, so when the chimp’s owner, Mollie, had got O’Flynn dressed up in a red military-style tunic, a single white glove and a pair of ray-bans, Baz rang upstairs to attempt to elicit an invitation. A woman with a bright American accent took his call. “Can I help you?”, she asked.

“Don’t laugh,” said Baz, “but O’Flynn the well-known chimpanzee star wants to meet Michael.” The woman didn’t laugh. She wanted to know if it was a joke. Her tone of voice suggested that, even if it was a joke, she still wouldn’t laugh. Baz was at pains to convince her that this, indeed, was no laughing matter. “Where is the chimp?” she asked. “Just down the hall,” said Baz. “Are you serious?” she asked (one could just imagine her, gesturing with her hands, mobilising the security people into action, covering the mouthpiece to hiss “We’ve got a live one here. There’s a loony and an ape in the building”). “Yes, I am,” Baz assured her. “Well I think that’s ridiculous if you’re serious,” she said.

Baz was ready for his dismissive tack; he wasn’t Chief Showbiz Writer for nothing. “But Michael loves chimpanzees,“ he pointed out. “I’ve read all this publicity about his pet chimp, his llama and his 300lb python – so who’s being ridiculous?” “Well that’s not the same thing,” countered the American woman, obviously flustered. “Of course it is,” insisted Baz, ”I’m sure Michael would be delighted.”

“Thank you for calling,” said the polite American voice. The phone went dead.

On the way out of the hotel, O’Flynn was mistaken for the absent Bubbles and assailed by waiting fans and papparazzi, having his picture snapped until, in the glare of the flashes, he went into a teeth-chattering rage and had to be bundled away. Baz wasn’t left with much of a story – but then it was an almost impossible assignment and he would just have to make the most of it. “I shall never forget,” he reported in the next day’s Mail, “the chimp who almost met Michael Jackson.” It had seemed like a brilliant idea, at the time.

You couldn’t get close to Michael Jackson, but for a week couldn’t get away from him. He was singing on the radio, dancing out of every TV screen, smiling from the newstands: Wacko Jacko’s Backo! BBC radio 1 ran a Michael Watch from his arrival at the airport, reporting every near-sighting with a reverence that would put the most devoted ornithologist to shame: “I see a shadowy figure in the back of the Daimler, do you think it could be...?”

Over a thousand fans had gathered on the viewing balcony, displacing the regular plane spotters to scream at a brief, distant glimpse of their idol and wave banners which men from Pepsi provided, which featured the company logo as prominently as the star’s name. A mini-stampede was started as young fans ran from the viewing area and helter skelter across busy streets in pursuit of their distantly-glimpsed hero spotted heading for a Rolls Royce.

Cornered by screeching, sobbing girls, the star turned out to be a 19-year-old British Rail guard called Keith Preddie who modelled every detail of his appearance – the lank, curling hair, the black and silver “Bad” bondage gear, the Ray-Bans, the white glove – on the thriller himself. “I thought I saw Michael’s van and started running,” said Preddie. “Before I knew what was happening, hundreds were chasing me.”

Preddie wasn’t the only Jackson lookalike on the loose. They turned up in a close proximity to wherever the man himself was supposed to be, at the airport, outside the hotel, wandering around Wembley Stadium, usually half-covering their faces with a gloved hand in lame attempts to suggest fear of discovery. The highlights of their day would be granting interviews to film crews and journalists who had given up on the real thing. In these moments of glory, they would boast of times they had been mistaken for the star (usually from a great distance), proudly detail the tedious hours that went into preparing the look (“It takes me an hour and a half just to get my hair like this”), discuss the fortunes to be made as a professional lookalike (“I sometimes make £40 a night dancing at discos”) and complained about how hard it was keeping up with Michael (costume changes are one thing but you can’t afford a lot of cosmetic surgery on £40 a night). Close up, none of them even remotely resembled their hero. How could they? Michael doesn’t even resemble himself anymore! One lookalike has been playing the part obsessionally for nine years and boasted of how, even as a kid, people had pointed out his resemblance to Michael Jackson. The clothes were straight off the cover of “Bad” but the face was the rounded, wide-nosed visage of the young Jackson 5 singer.

However if the reports of Michael’s make-up girl, Karen Paye, were to be believed, it was possible that one of the Jackson lookalikes wandering the streets really was Jackson. In an interview in the (always reliable) Sun – whose front page photo-story of Michael’s arrival ran under the headline ‘JACKO FLIES IN TO READ SUN SERIES’ (and perform in front of one million people – Karen said her employer liked her to disguise him so that he could wander the streets unmolested. “He’s out and about a lot more than people think,” she said.

Confirmed sightings were rare. After hours of waiting patiently in the pouring rain on the street outside the Mayfair, fans cheered as a figure appeared briefly on Jackson’s hotel room balcony... covered from head to toe in a grey sheet. This was either somebody’s idea of a joke or Michael’s homage to his hero John Merrick, the elephant man. The evasive superstar went shopping (after hours) in Hamley’s toy store (where he bought, amongst other things, Michael Jackson and Steve Wonder finger puppets – three of each at £3.99 apiece) and in a HMV record and video shop. He made a surprise visit to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital, attended a £75,000 CBS banquet in his honour (where the 300 guests were warned in advance not to approach him) where he arrived three hours late, sat close to the exit and refused to eat anything and had a brief pre-concert meeting with royal couple Charles and (Dirty) Diana (‘Michael was in his bondage gear. Diana selected a number in yellow golden silk’ reported the Sunday Times).

At times odd quotes appeared in the papers. “Don’t deal with these people,” Michael was reported to have said of ticket touts, “they make me go mad.” Britain was apparently “The Jewel In The Crown of my European tour”. The Daily Express quoted him in loquacious form saying “I’m feeling great” and “Yes, I really am” (when asked if he was looking forward to his London concerts). It was never made clear to whom he was supposed to have said these things, since, unless you were a member of his entourage, a sick child or British royalty you quite evidently couldn’t get anywhere near him. Could Charles really have turned tabloid stringer?

In the absence of words from the legend himself the media turned its attention to anyone who had anything to do with him. Members of his band, some of America’s leading and most highly-paid session musicians, were invited onto breakfast-time television and asked “Does Michael really bring his chimp everywhere?” An enormous bodyguard turned up on another channel saying “I haven’t seen any chimpanzee. I believe there is one but I haven’t seen it”. Frank Dileo, the short, fat, balding, cigar-chewing caricature of a manager was never shy of doing interviews on Michael’s behalf and determined to put all rumours to rest. “The chimp has a keeper”, he reassured the world. It didn’t eat with the star, sleep with the star, talk to the star or write the kiss and tell column that had appeared under its name in the Daily Mirror. Sure Michael spent a lot of time with Bubbles but that was understandable, it was one cute chimp. Frank was at pains to point out that this was a healthy owner/pet relationship. Why Frank had a similar relationship with his dog!

Frank also wanted to put to bed rumours about Michael’s plastic surgery (“he’s only had a couple of operations”) and his sexuality (“I’m sure he’ll marry and have about 20 kids, he’s just been too busy up till now”) and finally, before the interview was over, Frank would get in a mention about his own forthcoming acting debut in a Martin Scorsese film, Wise Guy (“Michael thinks it would be fun for me”).

We got the manager, the minders, the musicians, the make-up girl but no Michael. 15-year-old Lorraine Cooper got closer than most. Somehow she sneaked through the Mayfair and made it up to the 7th floor when nobody was about. She was found by the security guards kissing all the doors because she didn’t know which one Michael was behind. All she knew was that he was in there somewhere, untouchable, sleeping softly, dreaming of monkeys and mannequins.