Do we really need another King of Pop?

Chris Addison
1 Jul 2009

Since the staggering and untimely death of the frustrating, shattered musical genius Michael Jackson, we, the public, have pretty much been through all of the stages of grief.

As I understand it these are: (1) shock, (2) sorrow, (3) acceptance, (4) downloading songs off iTunes, (5) a creeping sensation that there must be other things going on in the world, (6) a bit fed up with reading about it and (7) what the hell is this story doing on the Today programme for the fourth morning in a row?

But as tempting as it is, we cannot only look backwards, we must concern ourselves with the future. If the King of Pop is sadly dead, what now?

Obviously if Pop is, as implied, a monarchy, we need to think about the succession. Monarchies, as you may well be aware, involve the passing of the crown on to direct descendants.

This is one of its basic design flaws (cf how few grouse-shooting mishaps lie between Prince Harry and the throne). In this instance, the crown would pass to Jackson's first son.

In standard monarchies the appointing of a regent would be deemed necessary for a king of such youth but in Pop you are considered a fully-rounded individual as long as your language is developed to the point where your vocabulary includes the words "baby", "maybe" and "crazy". Jackson's heir, therefore, is more than capable of taking up the sceptre.

However, we must ask ourselves: is this something we want? After all, in this modern world, is it not a little outdated?

Monarchies were all very well in times past when Pop was simpler and the charts were full of Dashing Away With a Smoothing Iron and Now Is the Month of Maying. (In fact, it's worth noting that the original King of Pop was Henry the Eighth, whose smash-hit number one Greensleeves stayed at the top of the hitte parayde until he died and it was safe not to like it.)

We live now in a modern world to which the adjectives "thrusting" and "vibrant" are usually applied in columns like these, and the notion of being ruled over by an unelected figure able to make whimsical, disastrous decrees such as "all ballads henceforth to be about lorry drivers" or "the Jonas Brothers should do more songs" is perhaps unfitting to the times.

It cuts both ways, though. We, the Citizens of Pop, are no longer really capable of operating properly within a monarchy.

Monarchies require deference and that is a characteristic that belongs to the past as much as blithely obeying people ordering you to walk towards German machine-gun posts.

You just don't see it that much any more. If you need proof, you only have to look at the way we behaved towards Jackson in the last 20 years of his life.

So, I propose a new system: no King or Queen. Just a president elected once every four years by the public. Exactly like they voted for Shayne Ward and Chico.

Oh. Oh, wait a minute...

My top tips for surviving the heatwave

In this heat it's important that you take the correct precautions to maximise your comfort. Among the lesser known are:

• Avoid Australians. They will tell you that this is nothing and you should see it back home. You will be too weak to reply satisfactorily.

• If you are passed on the street by a white van, on no account look inside as it may well contain the sort of chap who is ill-advised to go shirtless but nonetheless does so as often as possible.

• At over 30 degrees the English are held together only by surface tension. Therefore, don't touch anyone as they may burst.

Our cut-out-and-keep democracy

Gordon Brown is unveiling things again, then. Is he ever not? He unveils things so often it's starting to look like he might have got stiffed over a job lot of veils. This time, apparently, it's a vision. It's not always a vision, of course, to be fair to Gordon.

Sometimes it's as much as a relaunch, occasionally it's simply a policy raft and every so often it's a full-on fightback but this time it happens to be a vision.

They are all designed to reignite public interest and belief in the Government. They never work.

Partly for the same reason that if a bad singer got booted off Britain's Got Talent and came back the next year singing just as badly only this time through a ventriloquist's dummy no one would be fooled.

This week's effort is called Building Britain's Future. When you think about it, they have achieved something extraordinary in literary terms.

They have taken a profound sentiment and in the space of three words made it sound about as interesting as counting birdseed. They might as well have called it Stop Listening Now.

Also, no one will read the accompanying screed with — presumably — a picture of the sun and a bunch of multicultural grinners on the front. This at least is easily solvable.

Given how often they publish them, they should just turn them into an attractive Marshall Cavendish-style collectable partwork, each edition coming with a free piece of government that builds up week by week into a scale model of a working liberal democracy.

At least then we'd have one.

• Wimbledon's new roof is impressive but it is ultimately just a roof. So why the excitement? Is it the prospect of uninterrupted matches at last?

Up to a point, but my guess is that Middle England is simply delighted to see the marriage of two of its great obsessions — Centre Court has finally got a conservatory.

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