‘Creepy’ claims Michael Jackson wanted to marry 12-year-old star ‘shattered treasured family memories’
Jacko's pal says revelations have 'shattered memories' despite admitting star 'loved to cuddle and stroke' young daughter
THE god-daughter of Michael Jackson has been left distraught by lurid claims he wanted to marry her when she was just 12.
And in an exclusive interview with The Sun on Sunday her dad, Jacko’s pal Mark Lester, says the revelations have “shattered treasured family memories”.
Dr Conrad Murray — jailed for four years for the manslaughter of the singer — made the stunning allegations about child star Mark’s daughter Harriet, now 22, in a new book.
Talking for the first time about the revelations Mark, 58, said: “I knew Michael was very fond of my kids but I didn’t know he was so fond of them that he wanted to marry one of them.
“Harriet is absolutely freaked out by the claims.
She thought it was really, really creepy because she never saw that side of Michael.
“It is entirely plausible Michael said he wanted to marry Harriet because for the final few years of his life he was in such a state on prescription drugs that sometimes he didn’t know what he was saying.
“I don’t think it was anything sexual, in his childlike mind she was like a Tinkerbell to his Peter Pan.”
Mark and Jacko became pals over their shared experiences of being child stars.
And in his most revealing interview ever, Oliver! actor Mark, godfather to Jacko’s three kids Prince Michael, 19, Paris, 18, and Blanket, 14, told how the pop star:
LOVED to cuddle and stroke the hair of young Harriet — but insisted he was never interested in her sexually.
REPEATEDLY told her she looked like “a young Princess Diana”.
LAVISHED Harriet and Mark’s other children with £100,000 of presents one Christmas.
NEVER had sex in his life — even claiming to Mark he turned down a night with a naked Madonna.
Jacko, who sold 400million records and was worth £600million, died aged just 50 of a prescription drugs overdose in 2009.
In his book This is It — released this week — Murray, 63, hinted at a dark obsession the singer developed with Harriet when she was a small child.
He writes: “Michael fell in love with Harriet when she was roughly five years old.
“Then, by the age of 12, he had grown fixated with her.”
Murray — who fed Jacko a long list of prescription drugs, leading to his conviction — claims the singer asked him to go to the UK to ask Mark if he could marry his daughter, even though he had been told it was illegal in the UK and US.
Mark said: “He certainly didn’t ask me anything about it because I would have said absolutely not and Harriet would’ve told him to sling his hook.
“She’d have said, ‘I don’t think so Michael’.
“I can only imagine that Michael, in his childlike mind, wanted to whisk my daughter off to some kind of magical fairytale kingdom, make her a princess and look after her.
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“We had a lot of lovely, happy times with Michael. Conrad Murray’s claims have shattered treasured family memories.”
Murray was released from prison in 2013 after serving less than two years of his sentence for killing the pop superstar with an overdose of a strong anaesthetic.
Mark firmly believes Jacko could have said anything in his final days because of the number of drugs he was taking.
He said: “I can almost hear him saying in his drugged-up way, ‘I love her, I want to marry her’ so it’s very possible he said it.
“In his drugged-up state towards the end of his life it wouldn’t surprise me because having conversations up to four days before he died he was getting even more incoherent.
We used to have conversations go on for hours on the phone and he would keep repeating himself.
“It was like he had no one else to talk to.
“All my kids would talk to him.
“He would go on and on about Harriet going on stage with him.
Mark, who has three other children, Lucy, 25, Olivia, 21, and Felix, 17, asked Michael to be godfather to all of his daughters.
Mark said: “There is infatuation and there is fondness and Michael was incredibly fond of my children — he treated all my kids equally.
“One Christmas we went to Bahrain and he spent £100,000 on presents of Apple Mac laptops, digital cameras, state-of-the-art sound systems, jewellery and perfume. He gave them all the same.
Harriet would only have been in her early teens then.
“He would give them hugs and stroke their hair.
“He was very tactile.
“I remember taking a picture and Michael had his hand on Harriet’s head and it was in a guarding way. It definitely wasn’t sexual.
“He loved Harriet’s blonde hair but not in a creepy way.
“He often said she looked like Princess Diana when she was a young girl and that stuck to the point when even just before his death he wanted Harriet to perform on stage with him at one of his O2 gigs to his tune Dirty Diana.
“She agreed because she loved him like an uncle.
“There was nothing more.
“I took the girls to Neverland on a number of occasions and we spent Christmas together.”
On another occasion, in 2003, Jacko almost got arrested as he tried to impress Mark’s kids by hurling water bombs at passers-by from the plush Beverly Hills Hotel.
And in light of Murray’s claims, Mark is convinced it may have been a way to win the affection of his children.
Mark, now an osteopath in Cheltenham, Gloucs, said: “We were in the same suite where they filmed Pretty Woman when Michael decided he wanted to get some water balloons.
“So he sent someone to get some and they filled hundreds and proceeded to throw them at people passing below.
“Then the police were called.
“The kids idolised him for it and found it hilarious.
“That was Michael, he was happiest around children, he would have been happy if adults weren’t around.”
But Mark insisted any attraction to his children was not sexual.
He added: “Most people know that sleeping next to kids which aren’t your own, in your bed, is wrong but Michael didn’t know that.
“He lived in a bubble.
“He wasn’t attracted to kids in a sexual way, he was attracted to their minds.
“It is odd, I know, but Michael was asexual.
“He just wasn’t interested in sex with anyone.
“He told me he had some terrible experiences when he was a teen that put him off.
“He could have had any woman he wanted but he wasn’t interested.
“He was more bothered about watching Finding Nemo on DVD and eating pizza. He was like a 12-year-old.
“Sometimes his friendly affection for kids cost him.
“I remember going to Neverland and he let all of the local kids in.
“They ended up ransacking the place, breaking the golf buggies and stealing stuff from him.
“He just wanted friends.
“It wasn’t for sexual gratification.
“He once told me Madonna even made a play for him and he ran out the room terrified.
“They were both in New York in the 1980s.
“They were the King and Queen of Pop.
“Madonna invited him to her suite and she was naked under the bed sheets.
“Michael went ashen faced.
“He said he was terrified and ran out the room as fast as he could.
“He told me that ‘he could beat the 100metres champion’ as he ran away so fast.
“He might have not been what we describe as normal, but I still don’t believe he was a paedophile.”