When the office rang me last night to break the news that Michael Jackson was being rushed to hospital, the first instinct, I'm afraid, was to suspect a publicity stunt.
Within the hour, of course, it was clear that this was a very genuine, and terribly sad, story, and that one of the true icons of the pop music industry was dead.

Having discussed our coverage with the office, I found myself hooked to the breaking story on TV and on Twitter, far later into the night than was entirely good for me.
As my little group of Twitter followers will know, by complete coincidence one of our reporters had only been asking me earlier that day about what it was like to cover John Lennon's death.
I was working in the Daily Post and Echo newsroom the morning that story broke, and later got to cover the start of his killer's trial in New York.
I never saw Lennon play, to my eternal regret, but I did see Jacko, a story I covered when he performed at Aintree in 1988. It was a great performance, but perhaps almost too perfect - a polished show that you felt was being replicated in every detail in every venue he played.
In Jackson and Lennon we are talking about two of the biggest global music stars of the 20th century.
Yet the emotions I felt over the two events were so different.
I remember vividly the shock, disbelief, and the sheer anger I felt when I heard that some nutcase had robbed us of John Lennon and - if I am honest - of the possibility of the Beatles ever getting together to perform again. They had broken up when I was 14 and too young to have ever seen them, and like millions of youngsters of my generation, the hope still burned that we might not have seen the last of this extraordinary band. That dream died with John on that pavement outside the Dakota Building.
Last night, I knew I was watching a massive news story develop, and that is always fascinating. I realise too that his many real fans will be absolutely devastated by the news.
However, the only emotion I could honestly muster, beyond the initial shock that he had died so young, was one of pity for a life that appears to have been blessed with so much talent, yet tortured by so much unhappiness.
I feel sorry for his family, and in particular his children. But the searing, personal sense of grief that I felt when Lennon died just wasn't there.
Maybe I am just older and more thick-skinned. But I think it is more that, for all his song-writing skill and devastating showmanship, Jackson's music never held any of the raw, honest, emotional power of Lennon at his best. I enjoyed much of his music, but I never felt truly moved by it.

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