Gyles Brandreth’s Diary

When I met him, Jacko was extremely wacko – and rude

This’ll be the last time. I can’t tell this story any more.

I have been featuring it in the oneman show I’m currently touring, but I’ve got to pull it because Michael Jackson has now joined the growing ranks of the great unmentionables.

I dropped my riff about being Jimmy Savile’s sidekick on Savile’s Travels years ago. I never mention inviting Rolf Harris to turn on the Christmas lights at my Teddy Bear Museum. And as for that memorable backstage drink with Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic, forget it. My repertoire is getting thinner by the week.

And now, following more (and pretty convincing) allegations of the grooming and abusing of young boys levelled against the troubled and troubling Jackson (who died ten years ago, aged 50), Radio 2 won’t play his songs; the producers of The Simpsons have buried one of their favourite episodes because in it Jackson (uncredited) voiced one of the characters; and I can no longer dine out on my brief encounter with the King of Pop.

I got momentarily close to Jackson because I am a friend of the celebrated spoon-bender Uri Geller. In 2001,Uri published a book and, at the launch party (held, of all unlikely places, at the Royal Institute of British Architects in Portland Place), Michael Jackson was guest of honour.

As I arrived, the street outside was rammed with hollering Jackson fans. On a tip-off from a friendly policeman, I avoided the main entrance and made my way round to the back of the building. That’s where I found Michael, dressed in his trademark black, complete with face mask covering mouth and nose, stepping out of his limousine. Accompanied by his minders, the Gloved One and I were ushered into a service lift, and up we went to the floor where the party was being held.

Excited to be so close to the world star, I stammered a few words of exuberant greeting. He did not respond. I told him what a fan I was. He gazed steadily ahead. Then I attempted to demonstrate my own modest version of his moonwalk by way of tribute – and the doors opened and Jackson got out of the lift.

As he walked away from me towards Uri’s welcoming arms, I turned to one of the great man’s minders. ‘That was a bit disappointing,’ I said. ‘I did my best, but he didn’t say a word.’

The minder looked at me. ‘That’s because it’s a Monday,’ he explained. ‘Mr Jackson never speaks on a Monday.’

It’s exactly 50 years since I first visited the BBC in Portland Place. On 12 May 1969, I made my professional debut as a broadcaster, giving an Oxford undergraduate’s take on women’s rights in a short talk for Woman’s Hour. It was an afternoon programme in those days, but I was bidden to arrive at Broadcasting House at 11.30am, which I did. It then took 30 minutes to reach the studio. I had to be ‘escorted’ and my escort was an elderly commissionaire with the face of Charles Laughton and the gait of Richard III. This old boy moved incredibly slowly, dragging his lame foot behind him, sighing with every step, and losing his way at every turn − though he claimed to have been working at the BBC since before the war.

When eventually I reached the Woman’s Hour suite, half a dozen female heads turned in my direction accusingly.

‘We were expecting you at 11.30,’ said the producer tartly.

After the rehearsal – though the broadcast was live, everything was scripted, including the interviews – we adjourned to a room adjacent to the studio for a formal lunch, with waitress service and a strict seating plan.

It was like eating at high table in a women’s college, with Marjorie Anderson, the programme’s presenter, presiding as the Warden. She was simultaneously gracious and terrifying. I was paid a fee of £10, plus £3 travelling expenses.

Half a century on, I’m still broadcasting, but now I am podcasting, too. It’s a different experience: there’s no rehearsal, no fee, no expenses and no lunch, but it’s fun. You just record what you want and put it online and if people find you and like you, bingo, you might get a tiny financial tickle out of the adventure.

Once you hit 50,000 downloads, you start to be taken seriously: that’s when people want to advertise around your podcast and you can start to ‘monetise’ your endeavours.

Quirky titles are compulsory in the podcast world. I do mine with Susie Dent, the genius lexicographer from Countdown’s Dictionary Corner, and because it’s all about words we’ve called it Something Rhymes With Purple – since, while nothing rhymes with orange (or silver), there is an interesting, old word that rhymes with purple. Download us to find out what it is.

Podcasts are mines of surprising information. Did you know that the famous black box flight recorder in an aircraft is actually orange? As Noël Coward liked to say, ‘You live and learn,’ before adding, ‘Then, of course, you die and forget it all.’