Last week I awoke around 2am, couldn’t sleep, and switched on the BBC World Service. As I lay there, half awake, I cut into an interview and heard a creepy, reverential voice saying, “The whole world is praying that this report is wrong and he is not dead. This is a man we cannot afford to be without.”

Reminded me of the Tony Blair performance about Diana, the hint of a sob never quite heard, the effort at the dry eyes despite the pain of loss.

Couldn’t be Tony, though, as this man had a foreign accident. The only foreign accent Tony Blair ever tried was the working class glottal stop and he no longer needs that.

As I drifted, half asleep, and speaker rambled on without naming this wonderful man, my mind wandered to the identity of this amazing human being.

Perhaps the Pope, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dalai Lama, a Muslim Ayatollah, Billy Graham and so on. I soon realised that this amazing man could not be a religious leader as they are all at each other’s throats.

Maybe Professor Richard Dawkins who has done so much to encourage reason and science. No way. They would turn on him as one. In fact, that would be the only thing that could unite them.

The whole world was some claim. That must include Australians in the Outback; the Chinese choking in the fumes spewed out by their factories; the starving and tortured victims of Mogabe, the tribes of the Amazonian Rain forest with their trees razed to breed cattle for beef burgers, the Japanese pausing in the slaughter of whales for scientific research, the raped, crippled and starving of the war torn countries of the African continent.

What about our new Messiah? Maybe someone had killed Obama. Nope. Probably half of the USA want him gone so they can get back to polluting the planet without hindrance.

Perhaps some Amnesty International leader, a fund raiser for those in need, left bereft of help, because as in the UK we need the money for the Trident Nuclear Submarine or to keep those important people the bankers in the style to which they should never have been accustomed.

A doctor working amognst the horribly deprived in a war torn country? A medical researcher?

Then the name: Michael Jackson, a pop star, and the creepy voice Yuri Geller. And since then the madness has increased. Millions wailing for a pop star, a manchild who lavished vast amounts of money on indulging himself in a playground called Neverland; who wanted to whiten his skin; confronted with three boys who accused him of child molestation and so much else.

I am not competent to pronounce on his talent as a pop star but I accept that it must have been great. But what else did he do so justify the grief, the showering of streets with flowers, the bitter regrets from so many that they were not allocated tickets for his macabre funeral performance.

Michael Jackson will not mind either way: he is dead. All this self indulgent yapping and wailing is for those who want some vicarious kick; some association with a celebrity; some method of joining in group hysteria.

Michael Jackson is said to have been depressed and anxious about his forthcoming tour of the UK. He seems to have been a sad and indeed kindly man, only happy when able to cloak himself in his stage persona.

Unable to form anything approaching a mature relationship. I suspect he might, were he able, consider himself well free of the adulation of his fans and the grisly attention that so often comes with fame.