In February 2003, Martin Bashir’s notorious documentary Living with Michael Jackson aired. Coming 10 years after 13-year-old Jordan Chandler had accused Jackson of sexual abuse, the ITV film shocked viewers with a scene of Jackson holding hands with a 12-year-old cancer survivor, Gavin Arvizo, and admitting they’d shared a bed. “Why can’t you share your bed?” Jackson pleaded with Bashir. “The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone.” It was either staggering naivety on Jackson’s part, a failure to grasp reality, or a predator in plain sight.
Among the stunned viewers was Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, formerly a close friend-cum-spiritual adviser to Jackson, who appears in a new Channel 4 documentary series, Michael Jackson: The Trial. Meeting Jackson in 1999, Boteach had made it his personal mission to course-correct the King of Pop’s troubled life, to steer him away from self-destruction. Jackson was living a strange, lethargic existence – gobbling prescription drugs, crawling out of bed at 6pm, compulsively blowing millions of dollars, and struggling to finish his $30m, years-in-the-making album Invincible. By the time of the Bashir documentary, Boteach had parted ways with the singer. He battled against the “leeches, ass-kissers, bloodsuckers, and sycophants” in Jackson’s camp and was unwilling to watch Jackson kill himself. “I’m never gonna be a hanger-on. I love you, I’m your friend. But you are driving your life off a cliff and the drugs are going to kill you,” Boteach told him.
