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Peter Kelly recounts one of the strangest conversations he ever heard in his pharmacy…

The conversation went something like this: 

Me: How have you been?

Patient A: I was in hospital and had to have an operation. It all went well though. They gave me that Michael Jackson drug, it was lovely.  

Patient B: Sorry to interrupt. I just overheard you there. I thought I was the only one who called it the Michael Jackson drug. I had it as well for an operation.

Patient A: What did you think of it? 

Patient B: Oh yeah, it was lovely, I can see why he got hooked.

And they both laughed. So, what is the Michael Jackson drug? 

Propofol. Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, from acute propofol intoxication.

The doctor who was prescribing him the drug for sleep was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Dr Murray was injecting Jackson with 50mg of propofol every night.

The drug is normally used in a hospital setting to induce and maintain general anaesthesia for surgery. Jackson’s death was exacerbated by other drugs found in his system, including Lorazepam, Midazolam, Diazepam and Lidocaine. It was a lethal cocktail.

In a recent BBC documentary, we see that Jackson was in major financial debt when he died and was taking the drug to sleep as he tried to rehearse and prepare to do a string of sold out shows in London to help pay down his debts.

When he died his estate released a cinema documentary of his preparations for these concerts and grossed enough money to pay off his debts.

My most vividly remembered birthday from childhood is my sixth birthday and the reason is I got a Michael Jackson cake, a Michael Jackson jumper and every other gift I got was Michael Jackson-related and I was so happy about that.

As a six-year-old, I was a super fan. This was 1987 and Jackson was still a superstar although his stardom had passed its Thriller peak. One of my other gifts that birthday was a copy of the VHS of Thriller.

At this time, Jackson’s star was untouchable even though there were already whispers in media circles of bizarre and possibly illegal behaviour.

In 1988, Michael Jackson played a gig in Cork, Ireland, and it was noted he had a 10-year-old boy staying in his hotel with him. These whispers grew over the years and Jackson found himself facing numerous lawsuits.

While he was never convicted, there were large out of court settlement and his reputation was severely damaged. The recent BBC documentary documents all of this brilliantly.

Netflix, of course, did a more in-depth documentary years ago, specifically about the allegations against him. Personally, I believe on the balance of probabilities that he broke the law and engaged in sex acts with children.

However, many people don’t believe he did and I can totally understand why. In life, people believe what they want to believe. We know some people believe the world is flat, we know some people believe vaccines cause autism.

In the sphere of believing things that are not true, maybe believing Jackson was innocent is at the less delusional end. The evidence was essentially children’s word against his. There were no videos of lewd acts like with R Kelly.

People find it hard to believe Jackson was guilty because the music was so good and it meant so much to so many people, myself including. His music stirs something in me that very little else does.

There is a real incentive now for his estate to flood social media with ‘Michael was innocent’ propaganda and they will do because there is so much money to be made from his estate because the music is so good.

They just released a movie of his life called Michael which I saw and absolutely loved. It’s the fairytale version of his life. One of the most interesting things about the movie is the massive disparity between critics’ views of it audiences’ views of it.

On the Rotten Tomatoes website, critics have given it 39 per cent approval while paying audiences have given it 97 per cent approval.

I read two, two-star reviews of the movie, one in The Guardian and one in the Irish Times and I just don’t get the reviews. It feels like they want the movie to be documentaries. But that would make no commercial sense for his estate to make that kind of movie.

There is a scene in the movie where Michael is talking to Quincy Jones about collaborating on an album together. And Quincy says ‘let’s give the public what they want, pure escapism’.

This movie is pure escapism and all the more enjoyable for it. I’d give it five stars. The performance scenes with Jaafar Jackson are worth the cinema price alone.

The movie has been a smash at the box office and a sequel looks inevitable. And it’s a reminder that the experts do not always know what people want.

Peter Kelly is a pharmacist based in London and a stand-up comedian.