Wednesday 15/11/06
Story: Michael Jackson back in the UK
After a nine year absence he’s back, Wacko Jacko is in town to collect an award at the World Music Awards and we had been asked by one of our late night news shows to get whatever we could about the event.
He had actually arrived on Sunday, taken over the Hempel Hotel in Bayswater, dined at Nobu in Mayfair and been shopping in Topman/Topshop at Oxford Circus at midnight. We had not had to try and follow him around, only take shots of the newspaper’s coverage of his comings and goings in the capital.
Tonight’s event was another red carpet do at Earls Court Exhibition Centre. We had acquired last minute green wristbands giving us permission to film on the inside red carpet and nowhere else. We arrived at 1600 and even though the event began at 1930 it was packed out already. Photographers and television camera crews where everywhere along the red carpets. Crews could be heard arguing and jostling for positions and I was only thankful that I had brought my three step, step ladder enabling me to get some height and more importantly a view. Now my problem was that I don’t know any celebrities and can not recognise anyone of fame and notoriety, they just don’t register with me, I thought that was generally a good thing but perhaps not tonight. So as guests arrived how could I choose who to film? Well one way was to watch who the rest of the media paid the most attention too and film them, another was to spot the most outrageous attire and film them, easier for the women than the men if truth be told. We waited and waited, the likes of Jordan, Peter Andre, Paris Hilton, Rachel Hunter etc came and went but as I suspected no Michael Jackson. He had come to the event, even arrived on the red carpet outside, but had then disappeared down a separate entrance away from all the fans and media madness.
We could not film anything in the arena so waited at the press conference venue where more heated media jostling was taking place for tripod positions. It would seem that the Jackson madness was infectious. Now we all knew there was no way he was going to make an appearance in this press room but we had to wait for that just in case scenario, after all we were dealing with the King of Pop here.
Anyway to cut a long wait short, he got his award, performed and left, it was appalling, the event ended, we waited took some interviews with other international media reporters and then headed outside.
I took some exterior venue shots before being approached by a boy claiming to have a piece of MJ’s jacket which he had taken off and thrown into the crowds probably as a means to distract attention away from his poor sounding voice. We interviewed the boy and then went to find some other fans, who were fairly easy to spot because of their Jacksonesque attire. As soon as the camera went on they went mad, jumping around and swamping me shouting “we love you Michael” and “you’re the best”. Once I stopped filming they calmed down and were even somewhat deflated by the knowledge that I was filming for Japanese news. More and more people seemed to have scraps of his jacket, even the tiniest pieces were being treasured and guarded.
I was happy to leave, the weeks late nights were catching up on my enthusiasm. Back at the office I edited and typed up the fans comments whilst we waited for the official supplied footage of the event. It arrived and we fed it all to Japan. The received footage was half 4:3 and half 16:9 (widescreen) which caused no end of problems during the satellite feed and resulted in numerous extensions to the booking and culminated in the extra late finish.
Home at 0400.
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