Inside Jacko’s wild world
SINCE Michael Jackson died in 2009 – yes, it really was 13 years ago – we’ve had no end of documentaries examining his private life. Few of these programmes have left us thinking: “Ah, yes, good old Jacko. I must dig out my copy of Thriller, it’s been a while.”
Most, instead, have centred on issues of, shall we say, a nonmusical nature.Almost without exception they’ve been deeply disturbing.
So is there anything left to tell that could still shock us? You wouldn’t have thought so.
Until, that is, you consider the fate of all the animals the singer once owned.
SEARCHING FOR MICHAEL JACKSON’S ZOOWITH ROSS KEMP (ITV, 9pm) sets out to discover what happened to the vast menagerie that once lived on Jackson’s Neverland ranch in California. Or, at least, what happened to some of it. By the time Jackson packed up and left in 2005, his exotic pet collection totalled 130 creatures across 50-plus species. It included eight alligators, seven apes and monkeys, six giraffes, four tigers, three elephants and 20 exotic birds. Oh, and an animal called Baloo – “a full-grown bear that acted like a dog”, to quote a bewilderingly proud former Neverland trainer.
Kemp begins his search by trying to establish the fate of Jackson’s giraffes.
It doesn’t sound as though they had the happiest of lives on his ranch, but what happened to them next, he discovers – once they and other animals had been auctioned off to a “charitable organisation” – sounds truly harrowing.
Much the same applies to his elephants, including one given to him by his pal Elizabeth Taylor.
Jackson, of course, always insisted he was an animal lover, even a conservationist. In one clip, we hear him tell an interviewer: “I can relate to them a lot better than I can to humans.” And the former staff member won’t hear a word said against him. “There’s no doubting the compassion, care and sensitivity he had towards his animals,” he insists.
Needless to say, others disagree quite strongly.Animal rights campaigner Carole Davis believes
Jackson “collected animals very much like a collector collects exotic cars. It’s like, ‘Look at me, I’ve got so much money I can afford to have lions and tigers and elephants’.”
In Carole’s view, “Neverland seems like a fairy-tale kind of place but it was no fairy tale for the animals living there.”
Even Jackson’s fans, she feels, should accept that.
“It’s possible to have two ideas in one’s head at the same time,” she argues. “One can be a real fan of Michael Jackson’s fantastic music – and also hold in one’s head the idea that Michael Jackson hated animals.”