Monday, February 3, 2003 Posted: 7:51 PM EST (0051 GMT)
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Pop superstar Michael Jackson revealed in a surreal television documentary about his extraordinary lifestyle that his third child was born to a surrogate mother he had never met.
In Monday night's rare glimpse into his fiercely guarded private life, Jackson insisted there was nothing wrong with having children sleep with him in the bedroom of his Neverland ranch and vowed to kill himself if there were no children left in the world.
"I used a surrogate mother and my own sperm cells," Jackson said of his third child, who he infamously dangled over a Berlin hotel balcony in November to show off to his fans.
Asked how he selected the mother of Prince Michael II, the famously reclusive superstar told a British television documentary: "It didn't matter to me as long as she was healthy. I didn't care what race as long as she is healthy."
"I used a surrogate mother and she doesn't know me," the 44-year-old old self-styled "King of Pop" told ITV1 interviewer Martin Bashir.
Jackson first said in the documentary that he knew the mother of the child and had been present at the birth. But, when pressed, he later admitted she was a surrogate mother -- and the film-makers said this was the true version.
His two older children, five-year-old Prince Michael I and four-year-old Paris, appeared on film with Jackson wearing party masks. He fed his third child -- who he has nicknamed Blanket -- a bottle of milk while draping a veil over his head.
Children a 'present'
Jackson said that his former wife, Debbie Rowe, agreed to give birth to his first two children because Jackson was so desperate to have kids.
"She did it for me," he said. "She said you need to be a daddy...and she wanted to do that for me as a present."
He revealed that after Paris was born "I snatched her and just went home with all the placenta and everything all over her. I'm not kidding. Got her in a towel and ran. They said it was fine... And I got her home and washed it all off."
The singer said he would now love to adopt two kids from each continent of the world. "That is my dream," he added.
Jackson has been dogged by controversy and rumour ever since 1993 when he reached a multi-million dollar settlement with a 14-year-old boy who had accused him of sexual molestation. The superstar maintained his own innocence throughout.
In the documentary, Bashir met a 12-year-old cancer sufferer called Gavin who Jackson had befriended.
"I'm sleeping (in) a sleeping bag on the floor. I gave him the bed because he has a brother named Star, so him and Star took the bed and I went along on the sleeping bag," Jackson said.
Likes to tuck kids in bed
Jackson, a former child star who was physically abused by his father, insisted his interest in children was not sexual, saying he liked to tuck them up in bed and give them hot milk and cookies.
"I have slept in a bed with many children. I slept in a bed with all of them when (Home Alone child star) Macaulay Culkin was little. Kieran Culkin would sleep on this side, Macaulay Culkin was on this side, his sisters in there. We all would just jam in the bed."
Bashir spent eight months filming with Jackson, who insisted after persistent questioning that he had only ever had two plastic surgery operations -- and both were on his nose.
The two men developed a good relationship over the months of filming but Jackson was close to tears in the last meeting in Miami when Bashir kept pressing him about the plastic surgery, the child abuse allegations and his own family.
Jackson ended the 90-minute portrait with a poignant pledge: "If there were no children on this earth, if someone announced all kids were dead, I would jump off the balcony immediately."
