The truth behind Jacko

In part two of our compelling series about Michael Jackson, we lift the lid on his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley and the secret deal that made him a father three times.

Just a few months into a friendship that had evolved mainly by phone, Michael Jackson posed Lisa Marie Presley a surprising question. "If I asked you to marry me, would you do it?" he asked.

Was this a joke? A dare? Without missing a beat, Lisa replied: "I would do it." A silence followed on the line. "Hold on, I have to use the bathroom," said Michael. When he finally spoke into the phone again, he behaved as if everything was settled and Lisa was his new fiancee. "My love for you is real," he told her. "Please believe me."

It was a startlingly abrupt engagement. Yet from their very first date, at a dinner party staged by a mutual friend in early 1993, Michael and Lisa had hit it off.

The daughter of Elvis Presley and his wife Priscilla, raised at Graceland, had much in common with the world's most famous pop star, cloistered away in Neverland. Both had been sheltered from the real world, missed out on their childhoods and were mistrustful of outsiders.

Sex

They believed they were soulmates. Michael was openly flirtatious, and Lisa was impressed by his private candour and normality. As they talked, she began to feel she was seeing the real Michael, the man behind the mask.

His sexuality, admittedly, still seemed ambiguous, but he was soon kissing her fairly passionately. He seemed interested in her, and she was certainly attracted to him. Lisa liked strange guys, with an edge. And who had more of an edge than Michael?

Throughout 1993, when he seemed obsessed with 13-year-old Jordie Chandler, Michael dated Lisa intermittently. After he was accused of child abuse against Jordie, their relationship became more important.

He began to depend on Lisa for support in long, anguished phone calls. At the same time, her own marriage, to musician Danny Keough, was breaking down. "Yes, I started falling for him," she explained. "I wanted to help him, and I felt that I could do it."

As Michael spiralled into drug addiction that autumn, gulping down painkillers and tranquillisers to cope with the strain of the abuse allegations, Lisa stood by him.

To her, his strange marriage proposal offered access to his secret world: and, most importantly, a chance to mend this broken man. She felt a sense of mission to help heal his emotional wounds.

The following February, Michael invited her to Neverland. The two walked hand in hand through the sprawling Californian ranch, with its private fairground and menagerie, as Lisa's children Danielle, five, and Benjamin Storm, 18 months, played with their nanny. Later, the couple were seen kissing atop the Ferris wheel.

For the first two days, Lisa and her children stayed in one of the visitor units on the property. On the third, Michael ordered a dinner of poached salmon and cucumber to be served on one of the terraces.

Afterwards, he gave Lisa a pearl choker with a diamond clasp, worth about $50,000. That night, Lisa stayed with him in his bedroom.

Did they make love then, or later? Surprisingly for those who have long questioned Michael's sexuality, the truth is that he and Lisa had an intense and active sex life.

"Apparently, Michael is hot stuff in bed," says Lisa's friend Monica Pastelle. "Lisa said he was amazing, and she's been around.

Everyone was saying, "No way, Lisa. It can't be true. Michael Jackson? Are we talking about the Michael Jackson, the one with the glove?" But she wasn't joking."

For Michael, it was the first time he had experienced such chemistry with a woman. According to one confidante of Lisa's, their lovemaking took her breath away.

"The first time, she went to turn on the lights afterwards, and he leapt out of bed and ran into the bathroom so she wouldn't see his body," says this friend.

'He emerged 20 minutes later, in full make-up and wearing a silk robe. Then they went at it again.

"He liked her to wear jewellery in bed. They were into role-playing games, although Lisa would never say who was playing what kind of role."

Children

Events moved fast; soon Michael - who had previously stated he had no interest in procreation - was telling Lisa how much he wanted children.

On May 26, 1994, they were married at a secret ceremony in the Dominican Republic. Lisa's divorce from Danny Keough had been finalised 20 days earlier.

No family or friends were present. Priscilla Presley was furious at the news, convinced Michael was using her daughter to improve his image after the Jordie Chandler affair.

"Can't you see what he's up to?" she asked. "It's so obvious." But Lisa told her mother she was in love, and she was also hoping Michael would kickstart her own musical career.

Even so, their living arrangements were unconventional, split between Neverland and Lisa's oneacre estate in Hidden Hills, 100 miles away. Some thought she would move into Neverland, but there was little chance of that.

Not only did she want to maintain her independence, but her children - especially five-year-old Danielle - had failed to take to Michael. "What did I do?" the singer would ask, as Danielle ran off, squealing.

Once she started living with him, Lisa was amazed at Michael's emotional repression. She tried to help him but began to feel he was resisting her efforts. Perhaps, she pondered, he rather enjoyed wallowing in his own pain.

Marriage break down

"Lisa felt Michael was too much into playing the victim," says her friend Monica Pastelle. 'Maybe it was understandable, given all he'd been through with the Jordie case.

"Their relationship became strained as she tried to make him feel less sorry for himself, lift his spirits. She said he was like a young boy, angry at the world.

"She had no patience at all with the lost childhood routine. "Who hasn't had a miserable childhood?" she would say. "Show me someone who loved every single second of their childhood, and I'll show you a person who has deluded himself.'"

For her part, Lisa noted the hours her husband spent in the bathroom, applying and removing cosmetics. Throughout their marriage, she never saw him without his make-up. When they slept together, in the morning Michael would be gone before she awoke - in the bathroom, applying his foundation. She'd find his pillow smeared with make-up.

"Lisa would try to surprise him, waking early and tapping him on the shoulder,' a friend recalls. 'No, Lisa," he would shriek, "Please, don't look!' Then, he would jump out of bed and scamper to the bathroom."

Other aspects of Michael's behaviour alarmed her. She did not believe he was a paedophile, but it concerned her that he still chose to spend time with young boys.

The allegations rebounded on her and caused outsiders to question their relationship. Lisa became tired of having always to defend her husband, and wished he would consider what he was putting her through.

Jackson grimaced and tears came to his eyes. Just months into their marriage, time was running out - and he already had other things on his mind.

Debbie Rowe

Jackson had first met Debbie Rowe in the early 1980s, when he went to his dermatologist complaining of a skin condition. Panicked because of the emergence of mysterious blotches, he was certain he had a deadly skin cancer.

The dermatologist, Dr Arnold Klein, suggested he talk to his nurse and receptionist Debbie about his condition.

For a short while, Jackson did telephone her daily to ask medical questions, and the two became good friends. Whenever he came for treatment, Debbie would fuss over him, pinning the sleeves of his CDs to her office wall.

In the early days of his relationship with Jordie Chandler in 1993, Michael needed Debbie's help again. He had bleached his scrotum with Benoquin, a bleaching cream prescribed to him many times by Klein. The cream burnt and stung, causing great discomfort. Debbie attended to him. To show his gratitude, Michael gave her a car.

She was married, though unhappily, and over the years she and Michael continued their friendship. Through his courtship with Lisa, he continued seeing Debbie. Lisa called her "Nursey" but did not see her as a threat.

By September 1995, Michael was still pushing Lisa to get pregnant. She, however, was reluctant - already sensing that the marriage was doomed.

By this time, their physical intimacy had cooled - but Michael was not convinced they had to engage in sexual activity to have a child. Finally, one day over breakfast, he told her: "My friend Debbie said she will have my baby. If you won't do it, then she will."

Lisa was stunned. She decided to call his bluff. 'That's fine with me,' she said in a calm, controlled voice. 'Tell her to go ahead and do it.'

Thus encouraged, Michael acted quickly. That December, Debbie did become pregnant by him, though sadly she miscarried. Whether he and Debbie were intimate, or underwent artificial insemination, is not known.

For Michael and Lisa, meanwhile, there was clearly no future. Their divorce was finalised the following August and, though Michael was saddened by what had happened, he was eager to move on.

Debbie had said she would have his baby; and, at 38, Michael wanted a child. He was on tour when news broke that Debbie was again pregnant. Tricked by a newspaper, she revealed that she had been artificially inseminated at the Los Angeles Fertility Institute.

Michael denied the story, including the suggestion that he had an "economic relationship" with Debbie. In fact, she has received millions of dollars over the years. When his monthly budget was disclosed in court papers last year, it included "payment to Debbie Rowe" for $1.5 million.

Michael's mother, Katherine - a devout Jehovah's Witness - was dismayed at the impending illegitimate birth. She swept into action, ringing Debbie, and urging her son to marry her.

Michael agreed, and the two were wed on November 13, 1996, in Sydney, watched by 15 friends. The bride was six months pregnant; the groom wore make-up. Michael's best man was an eight-year-old friend named Anthony.

Their son, Prince Michael Jackson, was born the following February. He is now known as Prince Michael I - Michael's grandfather and great-grandfather were both named Prince. The proud parents cut the umbilical cord together.

"I have been blessed beyond comprehension," Michael said. A month later, he and Debbie posed for photographs, but she had played no active role in her son's upbringing.

"Debbie was not a significant presence," recalls a woman who worked as a chef at Neverland during Prince's first six months. "The baby was cared for by a team of six nannies and six nurses.

Pregnant

In November 1997, Debbie announced she was pregnant with a girl, her second "gift" to Michael. Paris Katherine Michael Jackson was born the following April, named after the city in which her parents say she was conceived.

Again, there was no suggestion that Debbie would play a part in her child's upbringing. When her "arrangement" with Michael no longer felt right, she asked for a divorce. He gave her one in October 1999, with around $10 million in a settlement.

Another baby was born to Michael in 2002, Prince Michael II. This is the child - nicknamed "Blanket" - whom the singer dangled from a balcony in Germany last November.

Distraught about the negative publicity this attracted, he publicly apologised, saying he had been "caught up in the moment". Michael has not revealed the identity of the mother of his third child.

While he maintains that the two older children were "a natural conception", he has confirmed that the third did result from artificial insemination, using a surrogate mother and his own sperm cells.

When Michael gave his infamous interview to Martin Bashir in February this year, the world learnt more about the way Jackson brings up his children. In one unguarded moment, he described how, after Paris's birth, he snatched her up and took her home, still covered in the placenta.

Debbie confirms he subsequently had the placenta frozen. Even for Michael, these were new levels of weirdness.

And Michael: has he found happiness as a father? The answer, at least in part, is yes, even though, to this day, old insecurities still threaten to overwhelm him.

Striving to be a good parent himself, the singer still wrestles with his own unhappy childhood.

Tomorrow we examine his early life: the abusive father he detested, and the self-loathing that drove him to the plastic surgeon's knife.

Extracted and adapted from Michael Jackson: The Magic And The Madness, by J Randy Taraborrelli, published by Sidgwick & Jackson on September 19 at £18.99. ° 2003, J Randy Taraborrelli. To order a copy for £14.99 (plus £1.95 p&p), call 0870 161 0870.