Michael Jackson asked if I wanted to be Blanket's godfather: Friend Mark Lester gives a touching insight into the tortured singer

Michael Jackson asked if I wanted to be Blanket's godfather: Friend Mark Lester gives a touching insight into the tortured singer

By Elizabeth Sanderson
Last updated at 1:16 AM on 28th June 2009



They were both childhood stars who made weekly transatlantic telephone calls to one another during a close friendship that lasted almost 30 years.
Mark Lester, who played the lead in the Seventies film Oliver!, and Michael Jackson had mutual trust and when they became fathers, they made each other godparent to their respective children
Indeed, Jackson, who spoke to Lester last Sunday, said he was planning to dedicate his opening London show to Mark’s daughter Harriet – and invite her on stage.
Family friends: Mark Lester, his wife Lisa and Michael Jackson at Oliver! with star Rowan Atkinson

And according to Mark, who was often at the singer’s side during his most troubled times, Jackson was in good shape physically and emotionally and was looking forward to his mammoth run of O2 concerts.
Lester, 50, who turned his back on showbusiness when he was 19 and is now an osteopath in the West Country, spoke of his shock at his friend’s sudden death.
In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, he said: ‘Michael was absolutely sharp as a razor, really focused. It’s the best I’ve known him in a long time.
'He said he couldn’t wait to get back on stage and that his kids were going to see him perform – it was one of the main reasons for him doing the shows. That’s why the whole thing is such a shock.’

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Lester said he finds it hard to believe reports the singer may have died as a result of using painkilling drugs.
‘I’ve never seen him taking anything or any evidence that he was on something,’ he said.
‘I’m an acupuncturist. One time he got a bad spider bite that wasn’t healing. I offered to treat it but he said, 'No, I hate needles, hate them.' That’s why I find it so bizarre that he was supposed to be having these injections.’
During their final conversation on Sunday, he said Jackson was excited about his comeback shows.
‘We were on the phone for about an hour and all of the kids spoke to him,’ he recalled. ‘We were talking about the show. He said he’d been rehearsing and he’d just done a Pop Idol-type competition with the dancers.

Grief stricken: Mark Lester and his daughter Harriet, 15, Michael Jackson's goddaughter who he was going to invite on stage at his first concert

‘We wanted to sit at the front and he said we could have the whole front row. He was supposed to be coming over next week for rehearsals.
‘People have said he was suffering from stage fright but I don’t think Michael ever had stage fright. Performing was what charged him.
‘He told Harriet he wanted her to come on stage with him when he sang his song Dirty Diana. He was really fired up. I asked him what was in the show but he didn’t want to tell us too much. He said, 'I want it to be a surprise. You’re going to be amazed by it.'
‘He was so excited. His children had never seen him perform and he wanted them to see Daddy at what Daddy did best. That’s what Michael does. He loved the attention. He loved being Michael Jackson. He was driven by it.’
Lester now lives in Cheltenham with his second wife Lisa and his four children, Lucy, 17, Harriet, 15, Olivia, 14, and Felix, ten. He last saw Jackson in March when the singer asked him to accompany him to the O2 for the Press launch of the 50-date residency.
He said: ‘I was with him in the car on the way and he was really relaxed. Afterwards the whole family went to stay with him at The Lanesborough hotel. We went out to see Oliver! at the Theatre Royal and spent the whole weekend with him.
‘He did not look like a person who would drop dead a couple of months later. He wasn’t unfit. He showed no signs of being unwell.’
Lester also refused to accept rumours that Jackson may have taken his own life. He said: ‘There’s no way he would have done that. He was dedicated to his family. That was not even an option.’
Child stars: Mark Lester and Michael Jackson became friends after both being young performers

It was 1982, just as the Thriller album was about to be released, when the pair first met. Jackson was on the brink of becoming, at that time, the most famous person in the world.
Lester was at home in London when Jackson’s manager called and said the singer would like to meet him. ‘I was with my sister at the time and she nearly fell off the chair,’ he recalls.

‘A few days later we went to see him at the Montcalm Hotel in Park Lane. He came over, gave me a hug and said, 'Mark, it’s so nice to meet you.'
‘I was very nervous but we had tea and then ordered up burgers and chatted. We shared a common baseline. He was much more famous than me but we had both been child stars and we were the same age. He said that in the teeny mags in America it would be him on one page, me on another and David Cassidy on another. He always used to say we were like the positive and negative, the black and white.’
Out of this surreal beginning grew an extraordinary bond. Lester became one of Jackson’s closest friends and allies and, in 2002, the singer asked him to be godfather to his youngest son, Prince Michael II – also known as Blanket. He also asked if he could become godfather to Lester’s children.
A ceremony at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas took place the following year.
‘It wasn’t religious but it was beautiful,’ said Lester. ‘Michael was a very spiritual person and had the room decorated with white roses. Afterwards we went back to the hotel room and ordered pizza.
‘Michael loved junk food. In March 2007 he came back to Cheltenham with us. It was the first time he’d been here. We watched DVDs and the kids played computer games.
‘I think we had pizza from Pizza Hut for lunch and in the evening we had fish and chips from the local shop. Michael loved fish, chips and mushy peas with lotsof ketchup. It was his favourite thing. Wherever we were, whatever restaurant, he’d have to have fish and chips. Everyone imagines he’d have some kind of weird macrobiotic diet, but he wasn’t like that.
‘The thing people never understood about Michael was that he was very clever at illusions. The thing with the veils was just an act. He used to say to me, 'I do it to create an illusion. I’m an illusionist.''
Jackson had traditional views and could be easily offended. Lester said: ‘We saw Billy Elliot and he was quite shocked at the language. He said he wouldn’t have taken the children if he had known. He was very firm with his own children. They weren’t spoilt.’
Beginning of a friendship: Mark Lester and Michael Jackson met in 1982 when Thriller was about to be released

As a long-time friend, Lester was one of the few people allowed to see the real Jackson. ‘He was much more normal than people realised,’ he said.
‘We’d go out for dinner or a coffee and he would notice women walking past and say, 'She’s so cute, she’s got a nice tush,' but then he would be very apologetic. In many ways Michael was asexual, but he had an eye for beauty.’
Jackson turned to his friend for support during many of the most difficult periods of his life. It was Lester who was with him when he first watched the Martin Bashir documentary which led to his 2005 trial for sex abuse. And it was Lester who joined Jackson in Bahrain after he was cleared of all charges.

Michael Jackson performs during the half-time show at the NFL's Super Bowl XXVII in California in January 1993
He said: ‘We were together in Miami when he saw it. Michael was just dumbstruck. He didn’t shout. I never heard him once raise his voice his whole life but he was very upset. Most of all he just seemed confused by it all.’
Lester said he saw nothing in the documentary that shocked him, not even the infamous scene in which the singer appeared holding the hand of 12-year-old cancer patient Gavin Arvizo, who later accused Jackson of abuse.
‘That was Michael. He didn’t see a problem with it. He just loved children. He saw himself as the Pied Piper.
‘At Neverland he had an enormous oil painting covering one wall and it was Michael as the Pied Piper leading hundreds of children of all colours, races, sizes.
‘Some were in wheelchairs. Michael was dancing and these kids were in a huge crocodile line behind him. He always told me he wrote his songs for the age group of ten to 14.
‘He would never do anything to hurt anyone and I don’t believe that anything ever happened with Gavin Arvizo. When I thought about what Michael did for that family, it made me sick to think that they could do that to him. The experience did make him more withdrawn. He took himself away and hid from everyone.’
Michael Jackson at the Festival Palace in Cannes in 1997
In recent years, however, Jackson had picked himself up and was ready to look forward. It is this, according to Lester, that is the real tragedy.
He said: ‘When I saw him in March it was the best I’d seen him in a long time. He was on fighting form. He was always on the phone. Sometimes he’d put on a cockney accent. He’d talk about 'going up the apples and pears'.
‘It’s just so awful. You talk to him one minute and then he’s dead.’
Now Lester’s main concern is for the children, Prince Michael, Paris and Blanket. ‘The really upsetting thing is that the children have lost their whole world, not just their father. Michael was the most wonderful father. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like for them without him.’
Nor can he imagine quite what his own life will be like without the friend who has meant so much to him.
‘The loss is too great to take in,’ he said, ‘but I’m not the only one. It’s a loss to the whole world.’