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The Farah Shammas Podcast
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The Farah Shammas Podcast
From Michael Jackson’s Bodyguard to Multimillionaire | Matt Fiddes
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What was it really like to be Michael Jackson’s personal bodyguard and close friend? 👀
In this Εpisode 13, we sit down with Matt Fiddes, Franchise Entrepreneur of the Year, successful entrepreneur, former personal bodyguard, and close friend of the late Michael Jackson, the King of Pop 👑
Matt takes us behind the scenes and shares personal stories, unforgettable memories, and experiences from his time with Michael.
An honest and fascinating conversation about success, ambition, friendship, business, and the journey behind the man.
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▶️ Enjoy the full episode on our Youtube channel: The Farah Shammas Podcast
🎧 Episode 13 is one you don’t want to miss!
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Yeah, what what's the problem? He goes, nothing, it's just there's someone I'd like you to meet. I was like, wow, this is gonna be interesting. Got my car, drove to his home. This frail man walks up to me and says, uh, hi, Master Matt for this. My name is Michael Jackson. Pleased to meet you. Introduce himself to me. I'm good, I know. And there was big names around the table, like Darrell Hanno and David Blaine and Britney Spears, people like that. And then he wants to go sit by the fire. He said, Mike, do you want to come join me so I can sit by the fire? He was flicking through Hello magazine, and it was him. I said, Oh Mike, it's you. Because yeah, I got a cameo man in black too, and it was him sneaking into the studios. We would all get pushed out and then have to try and find our way back in again. And he isn't someone you could just pick up the phone and say, hey, you know, dial him up and you're gonna get him. There was ways and means to get to Michael, the protection in place. People were trying to get to him every day, his fan base, the media. He couldn't have a mobile phone. We tried it. He put his glasses on, put his suit and tie on, he would control the room, business meetings, he would be firing staff over the phone that never landed, very much in control until the medication part came in. Then obviously that would waver his mind and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01Mas, I'm so happy to have you here. We've been planning it for ages, huh? When we're both on the on the rock and available, it's been tough.
SPEAKER_00We finally made it happen. It's good to be here.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I'm so happy. So why don't we start right at the beginning and delve in and tell everyone a little bit about you? Um I'm sure everyone's very eager to hear about Michael Jackson and that part of your life story, but that's only one little snippet, one you know, chapter. There's so much more to you and how you ended up in Cyprus. So tell us a little bit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I was just a buddy boy at school who was no academic, like um, I'll say gift, I didn't really have an interest. I was so underconfident and we get picked on, and and uh just knew at a young age it just wasn't for me. You can't teach 30, 40 kids the same way, everyone's different in the class, and and it was a very tough religious school. Like I went to was a Catholic school, Roman Catholic. So we were taught by nuns, so it was a very, very, very strict environment. And I was I was extremely good at coming up with excuses to my mother to that I wasn't very well to not go to school, and in the end she kind of worked out I was getting bullied bad. But there was a kid next to me who um I wish I knew who who his name, but I can't remember him, but I'll shake his hand, and he said to me, Matt, instead of getting beaten up in the school playground, come and learn martial arts, and he was doing a martial art called Jiu-Jitsu at the time, and I went along for a free class. I didn't really get on without martial art, but in the room next door there was one called Taekwondo, and um I had very long legs, obviously not as long as they are now because I'm six foot four now, but back then, even then, I was very flexible, I could do the splits already. I found something I was good at rather than being at school being told I'm not good at this, I'm not good at maths, my handwriting's terrible, and um and I just knew from a young age this is what I want to do. I I don't want to be what what my family wanted me to do. My mum was a lawyer. My uh every she's one of 14, they've all got university graduate degrees, they've all done an academic way, and then my father's from a get a trade background, so be electrician uh or something like that. And I love animals, and they wanted to push me down the way of being a vet, but without the qualifications in the UK, that isn't gonna happen. Take serious qualifications, not just a love of animals or ambition. So, martial arts for me was the thing, but you can imagine how my parents felt about that. How the heck are you gonna make any money out of that? My grandfather on my dad's side would say, How are you gonna make any money throwing your legs around in the air, Matthew? You need to get a career, a trade. That's what you used to say. Like, like they've done in generations. They've worked for the railway, the famous UK Railway called the Brunel. And um, my mum took a bit more of a different attitude because her dad was eight times Irish weightlifting champion and he's picked for the Olympic Games and in 1960 Olympic Games, so he's an athlete, and he won the British championships too. So he had a bit of faith in me. Because out of all of his 14 children, no one really shown that like uh physical uh talent that he had. I won't say talent, but um aptitude, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was looking for that, and then he had all these grandchildren, and you imagine there's hundreds of us now, and it was just two of us, it was just me who was showing an interest in sport, um, and and and physical bodybuilding and everything else, and martial arts, and then my cousin Wendy, my my mum's sister's daughter, who was into bodybuilding too, she and went on to win Miss Australia and titles like that. So he took me under his wing. So, whereas there's all this negativity around me, my my grandfather on my mum's side, she he you know, she wasn't against him. She thought, well, if your grandfather sees something in you, then um who can argue with it? And and my martial arts teacher, he he right from day one, he said, You you've got something different here. That's unusual someone can come in and do the splits. But yeah, I mean it's unfair to say people we're all genetically different, and I was born with that genetical gift to be able to do those high kicks that taekwondo rib cars. I I didn't want to jump around with jiu-jitsu with sweaty men and stuff. That's not for me, you know. I just or be thrown, or I I enjoyed kicking people in the head, but I enjoyed that ability, it was fun, and and it came naturally to me. So that's all I wanted to do. So at 13 years old, in my mathematics class, they were teaching the school qualifications we have in the UK, it's called the G SEs. And one of the mock questions was how many different ways you can put 50p into the red phone boxes you now see as museum plate pieces. And were they everything in Cypress? I think they were. I think I saw one in the village.
SPEAKER_01We didn't have the red ones, but we bought red ones, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So the red phone boxes were were a thing then where you'd have to reverse charge, dull your parents if you got in trouble or got lost or whatever. And so, how many how many different ways can you put 50p into a phone box? 220p's and a 10? Or just thought it was ridiculous. I'm not gonna use any of this in school, in um, in my real life, you know, when I leave school in three years' time. And I I just turned the exercise book to the back and I wrote all these goals, which were Millionaire Time of 19. My brother, Nathan's an amazing artist at drawing cars. He did his apprenticeship, I believe, at Ferrari. He had all these pictures of Ferraris all over his wall, and we're very different characters, he's extremely academic. So um I wrote down I wanted to own a Ferrari 355, which was like the top one back then. So you see him drawing them all the time. And uh I wanted to be in credible shape and and um be a bodybuilder, have the biggest martial arts school in the world, and be a millionaire by the time I was um 20. I think I wrote down, and that's what I just used to focus on every day, which the back of that mathematics exercise book. I did my best because my parents pushed me to the GSSCs, but I failed everything. I came out with zero qualifications other than my black belt and a personal training qualification. So yeah, my parents were horrified. They were horrified. Everyone in my family was horrified, apart from my granddad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but 16 had a black belt. I mean, that's that's nothing to laugh at.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, by the time I was 16, I think I was second or third down. I got my black belt at 12. So I started when I was seven. But yeah, but they didn't really see that as much as uh how am I gonna feed myself? How am I gonna get married one day? What's what's that gonna and and then it became ironic in the end because my dad ended up working for me. Yeah, I ended up paying.
SPEAKER_01And what number were you in the family? Like you had you said you had several. So you're the first, okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was like like the fourth grandchild, and I was the first child in your family. Yeah, there's there's four brothers, yeah. And um, yeah, they just thought I was a bit different. But mum was kind of a little bit supportive because of her ambitious nature of that becoming a lawyer, because she started as a legal executive and had us children, and then homestudied to to become a lawyer because we had the 1989 crash in the UK, and she worked out she could earn more money being a lawyer than she could then um as a legal executive, and then it wasn't known back then, but my dad became like a house husband, it was the only way they could survive. So, my memories of her as growing up as a child is her with her coming back from work and having uh study books and passing her exams. I think she qualified as a lawyer uh when she was 42.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I talk about her in the past tense, by the way, because sadly she passed away in 2012 for breast cancer at 56. So um, but she she was Matt, you Matthew, you know, there's no such word as can. I believe you can do something.
SPEAKER_01I'm so sorry for your loss. She sounded really an amazing character, uh huh.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she was wonderful. So she she pushed me, my granddad pushed me, and and um, and that was that. So I moved away from a place called Swindon. Well, she's about an hour from London, because I didn't want to open up along my martial arts instructors territory, because you don't, it's like a respect thing we have in the martial arts. And uh my parents at that point, my mum was practicing lawyer in um Devon, a place called Bronton, near Barnstable on the coast there. So um I got a job as a gym instructor, gym went bust, then I ended up working as a lifeguard. I got a lot at a lifeguard qualification, earning £2.75 an hour. That was pretty painful, but that gave me time to think about I was 16 years old, how can I pull this thing off, this um this martial arts that I really wanted to do because there is no blueprint, no one's done it before in the UK, made money from it. And I I do believe in the law of attraction because so many things have happened in my life I can't explain. I mean, it's deeply bizarre my life's been up until now, and still is now. And um, I opened up my first school and it didn't work out at first.
SPEAKER_01And then how did you open up your first school? I mean, you're only $2.75 an hour, you've got no qualifications, no financial backing from your parents. How did you manage that?
SPEAKER_00Uh I saved up £100, and then my uncle, the outer sibling, my my mum's brother, my uncle Michael, he uh he designed my first poster. I had to go on a squash court because I made this kick famous, the the flying psyche they call you see in my logo where. But back then it would we didn't have like paparazzi style cameras, so I hired a squash court for a couple of pounds an hour. I think it was 50p an hour or something like that. This was 1996, and I'll do this kick over and over again until we got it right, and you couldn't even look at see if you captured it right. You'd have to hope you were.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you had to wait to develop it. I love it. Oh my goodness, those are the days.
SPEAKER_00And the developers came, they came out and I had it bang on. I gave that to my brother Nathan. He made my logo, and then I just for some reason I because my back was against the wall and I wanted to prove the bullies wrong, my parents wrong, my grandparents wrong. I just put posters everywhere, I was aggressive with the schools, we're giving out leaflets and it was um they would page, they would call the call center, page me when I get a lead. Then I'll go to the red phone box, ring up, put the lead in, and I I had over 100 booked here and I got quite excited thinking this is gonna work out. The plan was to charge a three pound a class. My overheads were 15 pounds a night, twice a week on a Wednesday night, on a Sunday, it's just a school hall, a little village, 10,000 people. I was doing the maths on that, thinking, yeah, this is gonna work out okay. And it was a Sunday morning, and I went down there with my girlfriend at the time for the launch. We had over 100 booked him, and no one turned up. Oh and then uh I always thought, damn. And I walked back thinking I'm gonna have to try and work out this college thing and um turned the TV on and Princess Dana died. Hence why no one turned up. Everyone was glued to the TV. And then back then in the UK, it was just like four or five channels, not all these.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we only had uh uh four. The fifth one hadn't come out.
SPEAKER_00She was like, this was like major news, you know, people were hanging on. Is this real? Is it not? So no one turned up. So I reopened two weeks later and everyone turned up and we're paying three pounds a class. And yeah, long story short, from that point onwards, this is why I believe in the law of attraction. Is that one of my friends went to a fellow martial artist? He went to America and he came back and um paid for me. And he said, You've got to call me urgently. I thought there was something wrong. So I went to for my bed sit, so I had three bed sits, so I got evicted from three of them, 30 pounds a week, because I couldn't afford them. Went to the phone box, I said, Lee, it's called Lee. He said, Lee, what's what's going on? You okay? He goes, Yeah, I've just come back from America, man. And remember, this is before the internet, so we don't know what's going on over there. They're all used to be 20 years ahead of us in in terms of like technology or development and systems and strategies. He said, There's multimillionaire martial arts instructors out there. I said, Really? He goes, Yeah, there's even conferences you can go to where a thousand people turn up, and all they teach you is martial arts business. And they got Ferraris and they've got Lamborghinis, and I said, Surely it's got to be a catch. The standards must be bad. He goes, No, they've got the standards, they got everything. They're like 20 years ahead of us, and so you've got to come out with me. So I so I saved up my £2.75 an hour and my three pounds per class. And I think my ticket was about £300 to get to to um San Francisco. And I went to the event, and the event organizer was in his 80s, and he's not a martial artist, he's an entrepreneur. He had he owned most of the Marriott hotels, like shareholders. It's multi-like half a billion, he was worth. And in America, they have a different approach. In the UK, if you're ambitious, they want to knock you down, or they don't want your tarot to be higher than that. So in America, they they recognized the 17-year-old who's losed his last money, and he heard about me and um sat me down and said, Listen, um, uh, I've heard about you, you've used your last money, and let's make you rich and famous. And uh, you can be my ultimate testimonial for his consultancy business, which is helping martial arts schools grow and become financially successful. And he said, I can't guarantee any of this stuff's gonna work in England, but take it back. And I he taught you show me who to follow for two weeks. So I've made all these notes and stuff, and I followed around. And these people were crazy, they were getting up at like 4 a.m., having their staff meetings at 5 a.m. And then yeah, and it was learning the marketing, turning it into an educational program, putting people onto direct debit, which was called stand and orders back then. So I come back, I had nothing to lose, put everyone on stand and orders, and uh revelised, you know, the whole martial arts industry. I got hated on back then for doing it. Now everyone's trying to do it, you know, and it ended up being the biggest martial arts school in the UK. Within six months, I was making a million pounds a year. Out that bit sit, bought myself a first home at 18, buying five houses per month because I had a mentor on the property side.
SPEAKER_01And at the time I was 21, I was like, where did you meet your mentor from on the property side?
SPEAKER_00So um the success when you're that young and you drive. Oh, I bought that Ferrari by the way. So I yeah, I went in and you did it, all the things you wanted.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I did it earlier. So I bought the Ferrari when I was 19, 355. They totally didn't want to take me seriously in that showroom. So I was completely unknown at that point, really. I had a cap on and a track suit, and I wrote the checkout and he couldn't believe it. Uh, he even paid for a fast clearance to see if it was going to go through, and then and then um I drove it away that day. And um, but yeah, 19 years old. So then what happened then? It came to the media's attention. So back in that era, late 90s, tabloid media in the UK was very um aggressive. Each publication, you're talking 20 to 30 million copies per day. If you're on a TV show, you've got 30 million people watching you, it's just four channels. So um, this journalist came into the martial arts school and he said, Matt, my kids train with you, son and daughter. Um, do you mind if I do a story on you? Buddy boy, got no qualifications. You clearly make a lot of money, see your car outside. And he took some pictures of me doing a punch, he interviewed me about my story, and then did some pictures of me in the car, the Ferrari. And I just thought before the local newspaper. I didn't think anything else. And then nothing happened for a few days. And I then I woke up and the landlines were ringing off the hook. I was the front page of every single newspaper, and it international. They put it on what they called the wire. So it went round the world. Buddy Boy becomes millionaire through martial arts, proves Bully's wrong. And then I got invited to all the TV shows, like morning TV shows, um, and uh the evening ones as well. And then you can Who was your favorite?
SPEAKER_01Uh which was your favourite one, like being interviewed by who? The one that broke at the time.
SPEAKER_00The one that brought it to the attention where we go next was um Trisha.
SPEAKER_01Trisha, remember Trisha?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she I don't think she knows. I tried to reach it reach out to her recently, but she's got breast cancer, sadly, secondary breast cancer. But um, it's kind of hard for me to tell her the story because I've lost my mum. I don't want to come across negative, you know. You did this. She had me and my mum on, and I I turned my my martial arts uniform on, I did a kick in front of the crowd, and that was a big hit. And my mum told her side of the story that she did everything she could to stop me being bullied. I've almost gone to about six or eight different schools. That was a strategy to try and control it. And and and then Trisha was like, Well, look, look at you now, you know. And there's a there was a story um where I drove up my Ferrari, it don't sound great, but at least I'm human, to uh drive through McDonald's, and then my bully served me through the window looking at me in the Ferrari.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, is that a true story? It's a true story. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00And she picked up on that, yeah. And she was like, Good on you, and they give a round of applause. And they were trying to stop bullying, but Trisha was the cat of this because Yuri Geller was watching that. And uh he has Cypress roots too. He was raised here as a child, and and uh due to sit some kind of war that was happening over in his home country in Israel, so he was raised in Nicosia, and uh it came to Yuri's attention, and then it came to Michael Jackson's attention, and then his best mate was Michael Jackson's Yuri's world famous, and he was mentoring Michael Jackson at the time on music, mind power, and stuff, not just bending the spoons, which most of the Yeah, everyone remembers the bending the spoons. I remember the Superit's actually they he's still extremely famous. Yeah, everyone really shocked when I'm talking to him on the phone. Like, is that really you get that?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's he was huge in the 90s. I mean, I I don't know what's happened since, but I remember it was also the the the spoon on the television, it would jump out and yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but his big thing, he filled he used to fill up like stadiums with a bit like Tony Robbins. Yes, exactly. Yeah, two choices. Tony Robbins had the firework, firewall, but Yuri Gill had the spoon bending, and they both teach the same kind of mind power strategy. So he was my property mentor, kind of story. Oh, okay. He was like, stop wasting your money on Ferraris and and uh buy houses and never build any more land.
SPEAKER_01And so he would get just because he had of you and got in touch with you, and then you yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, his his bodyguards said that uh Mr. Gale would like you to come meet him. He was going backwards and forth to Affians at the time doing a TV show every week. And um, yeah, I went to meet he had a literally a replica of the White House, a 20 million pound home. So that inspired me enough when just to see that and see how he lived. And uh we became firm friends, godfather to my eldest daughter, and uh I had no idea who his friend network was. And and we we just became yeah, he wanted to meet me to make a video on to try and combat this bullying problem we had in the UK because there were two girls that got murdered, Holly and Jessica, and he took it to heart.
SPEAKER_01Uh, I think I remember something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the guy just died, uh Ian Huntley, he was the guy who killed him, and he got he did die, he got murdered in in um in jail, and uh he wanted to do positive mindset versus me doing the self-defense, because I was what you call trending, I was everywhere back then, you know, and seen as the martial arts go-to guy. So we didn't end up making that video, we ended up making uh like a kickboxing type video for Worming, and he did the positive mindset to keep going and all the rest of it. None of the spoon bending was in that, and that was a success, mainly in Asia, where he's got a huge following because he's a Pokemon character, Kadabra.
SPEAKER_01Is he?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yuri gets a program character, and and then yeah, then it just goes mental from there on, I guess. I so I built up.
SPEAKER_01So it was yeah, Yuri, who was friends with Michael Jackson, told Michael, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I don't know the conversation between what happened. I never asked him. I will do. He's nearly 80 now, Yuri. He has the Yurigella Museum in Israel, old Jaffa. But every time he tries to open it and get it going, something seems to happen, you know, bless him. But that was his dream with me. I gotta take all the things I've got and open go back to my my home country of Israel and open up the Yuri Gella Museum. So he's got everything there. And but he got hit with the COVID and then he got hit with what's going on now consistently with the the wars. Um, but he's 18 in December, but we we speak daily still, and he's still a mentor now. But no, what happened then is that he called me in the middle of the night, which is not unusual for him because he's got companies all over the world, and this was landlined, so it three o'clock in the morning calls me and he says, Uh, Matt, you've got to come to my house now. And I said, Where are you? He goes, I'm in Son and on Towns, which is Reading, it's about 45 minutes of London, about three and a half hour drive from where I was staying. And I said, Okay, yeah, what's the problem? He goes, Nothing, it's just there's someone I'd like you to meet, and you've got to come now. So, well, you gotta tell me. How am I gonna tell my partner? She's gonna think I'm cheating or whatever. He goes, I've never done you wrong so far. No, so so you got a Ferrari, stop moaning, and um, I'll see you soon. Love you, bye. He put the phone down on me. I was like, wow, this is gonna be interesting. So I did have a major relevant partner at the time and got him a car, drove to his home, and uh, yeah, this this frail man walks up to me and says, uh, hi, Master Matt for this. My name is Michael Jackson. Pleased to meet you and introduced himself to me. I'm thinking, I know you are, but what are you doing here? What they I I just thought it was like a prank show because back then we had all these it's called Jeremy Beadle, and we had um Candid Camera.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, candid camera.
SPEAKER_00Master Kutchen had his thing going on, and 'cause I was doing all these shows. I thought I'm being stitched up here by a lookalike or something like that. But it was quite obvious after five minutes, it's the real deal. And he just finished uh
SPEAKER_01At the beginning, you must have been like, okay, where where the thing is.
SPEAKER_00Well, he was so shy. Michael was so shy. I just couldn't understand it. Because I he just finished the history tour and he did a show in Munich called Michael Jackson and Friends. He just came back from that for Nelson Mendela to raise money for South Africa. And um he was staying at Uri Geller's house, but I just can't understand the shyness versus the performer I'd seen on stage before on TV, you know, this this animal with a microphone with the moonwalking dancing. And this guy had a job to look me in the eye. Um so that but yeah, we we we got on so well, and we we literally, this was like 6:30 in the morning, and we'd stay up all day, and he came out of my my car, and we we drove around Reading, and everyone just thought it was a look alike. He would wave at them, he'd he'd think it was hilarious. And then step we stayed, I stayed there for a couple of days with with him, and then um I thought, shall I ask for his number? Because we were getting on so well, and he kind of fobbed me off. But now, as I got to know him, that's not he didn't. That's the way Michael Jackson worked. He couldn't have a phone number, so I said, Mike, have you got a number? How do I get older of you? Because he's going back to America. He goes, Oh, I'll take your number and I ring you. And I thought, oh yeah, okay, I'll never get in the hear from this guy again. And how am I gonna tell all my family now where I've been for two days? That was my biggest issue because there's no pictures, there's no evidence, nothing. They're gonna think I'm cuckoo, you know. So um, anyway, um he he uh he took my number and he said he'll call me within two weeks. He's off to New York to finish recording an album called Invincible. And like a month went past, nothing, nothing at all. And then my brother, Nick, who used to work on reception at my martial arts school in Barnstable in Devon, he went to work and he got there before me and he played back the astrophone messages, and there's a very long three-minute one, and he called me up at home and he goes, You weren't bleep, bleep, bleep, believe this, but Michael Jackson has left you a message and he's got left you tickets to come and stay with him at a hotel in New York, meaning me and my wife at the time. And um he said, I've played it about 15 times and I've saved it instead. And uh and I I told Nick knew, but he did I think Nick was a bit skeptical too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it says he really lost it.
SPEAKER_00Michael was massive back. I think nobody nobody realized uh understand in the 90s how big it was massive, and in the 80s he's even bigger, and and uh you know you can go anywhere, we couldn't do nothing with Mike. And yeah, so I went out with him, hanged out with him for two or three weeks, and yeah, we're in in in a hotel or in his in a hotel, yeah, penthouse suite, and uh just what we used to do normal things, go to movies, so he just asked you to come like just as a friend, let's hang out.
SPEAKER_01He was lonely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he was lonely bored, yeah. We want some company and and also the thing I'm missing here is the reason he wanted to meet me is that he's a martial artist. So Joe Jackson made sure that all of his sons were trained in kanfu martial arts. Okay, he was a boxer, Joe was because Jackson Five put that element of risk on them. He wanted to be at them to be defend how to defend himself. Michael couldn't just rock up to a class anymore, you know, he's too famous. So I think the conversation with Yuri Gellow um Michael went along the lines of I know a guy who's already a multimedia, you can trust him, and he's one of the most famous in the UK at the moment. And um, I'm working with him. Would you like me to introduce you to him?
SPEAKER_01So to teach him or like to keep having lessons.
SPEAKER_00He wanted to progress to second down, yeah, along with his best friend, a guy called Mark Clester, who played the original Oliver Twist, that musical.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_00They're the same age, they're Charles Charles stars together.
SPEAKER_01They were they oh really yeah, so that's that's how it came about.
SPEAKER_00Um it was the martial arts training, and then he wanted me to introduce him to Bruce Lee's uh only surviving Charles Shannon Lee and his ex-wife Linda Lee, because he'd like to study why Bruce. So he I had connections to be able to get it's a small world, the martial arts world. So we just I had a friend who was friends with Linda Lee, Bruce Lee's ex-wife and Shannon Lee. And I asked Michael, why do you want to meet them? He goes, Well, I want to find out what made Bruce Lee so relevant, why he was such a genius, because that's what Michael's about study the greats, make them better. Um, but yeah, that's how that's how it came about. It wasn't a bodyguard at first, it was just a year of friendship and hanging out with my family. He'd come over for Christmas, and he would come out, hang around our house, and we would stay with him, and he would take my kids out shopping, we'd share hotel suites together. I mean, so when I see all this nonsense going on, I'm like, I had two stepsons, and and they at the time they would have been like like eight and maybe eleven, and there there is no issue whatsoever. I'm the guy who's sneaking the women into his room, and and my ex-wife would be the first person to say, you know, there was issues, there was nothing, it was just uh he wanted to keep it says it in the mystery, he puts it in the I'm glad the estate did that because Michael used to have his mantra, I want my my life to be the biggest mystery on earth. And he used to say if you want people to be interested in you, you need to stay interesting, and I don't want people to know if I'm gay straight or whatever, and it backfired on him. That was the problem, and um yeah, towards the end we we were trying to fix that, but then we had Martin Bashir screw us over.
SPEAKER_01So it was I know the Martin Bashir endless was a yeah, disaster. I think it was it always disastrous. Disaster for Princess Diana, it was a disaster for Michael.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, Princess Diana never really found out exactly what happened, and I've been banging on for years about because I was in that initial meeting when Martin Bashir pitched Michael. This was in London, June 2002, at a Renaissance Hotel. Michael said, I want you to sit on it, and and it was me and two others and see what you think. Because there were three people after the documentary, a guy called Louis Faroux, who's just made this documentary called Manosphere, which is blown up, like about Andrew Tate and that kind of era, that thing that's going on at the moment, masculine masculine side of things. And there was a guy called Sir David Frost that Michael had met a couple of times before.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he was very famous, very famous, very credible too.
SPEAKER_00So we were trying to get him to go with Sir David Frost.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, which is so much.
SPEAKER_00But as soon as Bashir got that Diana letter out, handwritten saying, Thank you, Martin, for what you've done to me. You've cleaned up my image, and I I owe my life to you and everything. And he handed that to Michael because Michael was friends with Princess Diana, he was like, You're the guy I want to work with. Yeah, and he had edit control, agreed, that uh that it would be that at the end he could watch it because he's so used to getting screwed over all the time by the media that he could change how he wanted to change it, and and it's all supposed to be about the music and the dance, and it wasn't until the last few days where Martin didn't turn up where he was supposed to turn up to meet Michael, where Michael was waiting for him to view the VHS tape to edit control, to take out what he wants or put back in in 2003 that we we realized that we've been screwed and we couldn't get old of Marty Bashir ever again.
SPEAKER_01Never huh?
SPEAKER_00No, not until we got subpoenaed to the 2004 trials to g to give evidence. And he just throughout that throughout that trial, he just refused to answer any questions. You know, he just yeah, that was it.
SPEAKER_01Never heard Well, I know I I know that you've said that you didn't um want to watch the Netflix documentary.
SPEAKER_00Um I mean the damn thing. I they that I couldn't I you I didn't see you and I did watch the book. In episode one, I'm bodyguard him like I mean I I I get it, but yeah, I kind of um and I know his main lawyer said, I mean, what is the point?
SPEAKER_01But I did watch it. I did watch it because for me as well, because I think I didn't follow um the case like you know, really well at the time. So I just found it quite interesting to to watch it now. And I I actually think they did do it quite well. They showed it um quite factually, you know, it wasn't it wasn't biased or um and Netflix has done things that are very much against Michael Jackson. So this one was actually almost quite refreshing, and it does very clearly show even with Martin Bashir being interviewed in this document before, and it's still it's not in his favour. I mean, it is not even what he said, I was like, you know, it showed that in he he basically says, I was so lucky he said this, and then I could use it, and yeah, he didn't say twist it, but that's what it looked like he was doing. Um, you know, for me, it just put me like, oh my goodness, what a snake!
SPEAKER_00Like, yeah, because what we were hearing, we weren't there all the time when Bashir was filming, but in Everland. Like Michael is was very, very aware of how big a documentary about him would be. So he he would distance himself. In fact, um, there were people who were staying at the ranch when the guy, the kid went on to accusing the visa family, where he went up to Michael and said, Michael, you brought this sick family over this child who's got cancer, and you're not spending any time with this child whatsoever. You need to come out of your room and spend time with him. But but there are He said that, Martin Michir. No, a guy called Rabbi Shmooly Batek, who was uh an advisor to Michael at the time. And and Shmooley um was friends with Michael for two years and was at the ranch when when Gavin was there for the first time, and went to get Michael out of his room because he was not spending enough time with this family he felt. Uh, he's gone on record to say that on podcasts, so I'm not breaching what he said. And um, yeah, and when the filming was going on, there's there's certain people who were in my circle who are not now, because they've they're now making allegations to who would say, Matt, listen, I'll tell you, Michael didn't want to hold Gavin's hand because he was worried how he was going to look. But then Bashir would say, Well, then you've got nothing to hide. If you're holding his hand, you've got nothing to hide. And Gavin, why don't you put your head on his shoulder? You know, you've got nothing to hide. This is all genuine, like you said, love and stuff. And the backup tapes show that because Michael had his own cameras rolling. Oh, there's another version out there of it called uh Living with Michael Jackson, the footage you were never meant to see. So what Bashir didn't realise or forgot was that Michael's cameras were always rolling to protect himself. So he would contradict himself. It's on YouTube, people can go and watch it. As soon as you watch that, you won't believe that documentary because it'll they cut short. Like when he speaks bad about his dad, then he goes on to say, Yeah, but if it wasn't for him, we'd probably be in in jail or on drugs or dead, like our friends are Gary Indiana. We owe everything to Joseph. Uh and he cuts it at the point where he says he used to whip me with ironing cords and slap me against the walls and stuff and things like that. And then and then Bashir, long form, if you want go and watch that, you can see. But I but I'd understand it because the BBC I opened up an inquiry with the Dan and he Bashir was found guilty. But with Michael, ITV needs to open up a uh one with Bashir now, make him found guilty, not giving him platforms like Netflix to go on. But yeah, we we we tried to stop it. We gave um witness statements, us us three that were in the room with Michael about what was pitched, the the contract that was made verbally, and uh we tried to get an injunction against it, but we were too late. Michael was crying, we were doing everything we could to help him, but it was too late. It was because we aired in the UK first and aired in America three days later.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it was the beginning of the end.
SPEAKER_00It was just Yeah, it was the end, and and then and then yeah, and then the allegation came out, which is but the allegation came out after the documentary aired. So if anybody had any logic, why would you why would Michael put himself because they said nothing happened until the documentary happened, that's what the Aviso's mum said, which surely you would be very careful, which that everyone thinks you're a child molester around the world. You're not gonna go near kids, you know. But they accuse that only it only happened after it was aired. Yeah, it was all a hatchet job. You got found not guilty, but yeah. My view on that documentary, I'm an entrepreneur, I get it. I understand Netflix have got to make money, and they they've released that to coincide with the movie, and a lot of people who knew Michael have released books. I got offered half a million pounds to release a book to coincide with the movie released, the Michael Jackson biopic, uh, because they know he's gonna make a fortune. Uh, but um, I didn't need the money, so for me, but for Netflix, they it's a bit strange how they say to the public, 21 years later, decide if he's guilty or not guilty, off you go when he was put through the mill. I mean, he lost Michael.
SPEAKER_01I didn't take it like that. Having watched the documentary, it um, yeah, for me personally, I I guess people will see everything. You see art and you get a different point of view. But for me, you know, watching that, I didn't take it like that. I didn't take it like oh decide, or it's just like factually, let you know, it this was a long time ago. Some of you might not have watched it or have known the whole story, or you might be younger, or you might have been in a different place. So if you are interested, we'll just sum it up in this short um documentary. Of course, they're making money from it, but I found that it was quite good on showing factually what happened, what was presented, who was embarrassed, who didn't do well. They weren't like, oh, and the lawyer cunningly. They were like, no, this is so um, yeah. I mean, for me, I watched it and I was just like, oh, well, then there we go, he's innocent. Yeah, you know, I didn't I didn't take it like, oh, I'm wondering now. Because that was the verdict. So, and it is called the verdict. It's not like what do you think the verdict is? It's the verdict. And it wasn't even done in a like OJ Simpson way to understand how it unfolded like that, and that the you know, he was guilty, but it no, it was just very factual. Um you know, seeing it again in a way that because it was never televised. Um it should have been.
SPEAKER_00Had it been televised, the public would have thought what a little nonsense this is, honestly. The woman had already been accused of accusing someone else of sexual harassment.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00They cover that?
SPEAKER_01Yes, they put that. Okay, that's it. Yeah, they put it on.
SPEAKER_00And then she went to jail after as well for perjury. I don't I don't know if that was mentioned, but it was definitely mentioned that she chandler came out and the the 1993 one to she he contacted Mrs. Jackson, who's still alive of Michael's mum, um, after Michael passed away, days after Michael passed away, to say that um uh his parents made him do it. And he how can he go about putting this right, you know? And immediately his father, Ivan, Ivan Chandler, who was the man behind this, if you go online, you can find the tape saying that we we're going after Michael, and if we go if we get him, we got them got him big time, you know, he's gonna have to pay us money. Because he presented Michael for a movie deal. Uh, as soon as he heard Jordan Chandler was gonna was in contact back with the Jacksons, was gonna say that his parents made him do it, his dad shot himself, killed himself. Two, two or three days after Michael passed away. But the media printed like this big, you know, it's just yeah, they really went after him.
SPEAKER_01And I have to say, in the 90s, you know, I am one of them. I was like, oh well, must be. I didn't look into it a lot, you know. I was also very young, and I was just like, oh, this is going on, one would make sense, you know. You just see the tabloids go on and on, and unless you bothered to research or really like my cousin, who was a massive Michael Jackson fan, she was like, you know, hundred never would have believed it. No way, that's not his character. This was all rubbish, but she followed it and she knew. I was the payoff.
SPEAKER_00People understand the payoff and how the law was back then. It was different. They they changed the law because of Michael Jackson, that case, because they brought a civil case against him, which means they're going for money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I've got six children. I can't remember how you said you had three.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So when molested, my kids, uh, I won't want money. I wouldn't even say on this podcast what I'll do to them or want done to them, I'm sure you'll be the same. I won't certainly settle for 20 million and let it go away. So Michael was in the middle of a tour called Dangerous, and it was talking billions at stake here, and he's under contract, and hundreds, if not thousands, members of staff, two 747 jets of kit, stadium sold out around the world. So he didn't have the power to just hang around. And he's insured, Michael is insured against every single thing that could possibly happen. If he says something bad on TV, they've got negligence, insurance, and so forth. So he he got in a conference room and he was overruled. Michael said, No, I'm not paying his family money. I'm gonna fight this out and I'm going to have my day in court and I because this will be forever around him. But the problem he had is that he had to wait for them to bring a criminal case against him. So, what happened in the end? The insurance company said, Michael, we need to get you back on the road. The dangerous toy needs to get back on. And and um, he said, I understand that there's a lot of jobs at stake and so forth. So, this we will cover this. You're insured for this. It was rumored to be 20 million dollars. We'll get rid of that versus the five, six billion at stake. We need to get you out, and when they bring criminal cases against him, then you can clear your name, and then the insurance company will sue and get their money back. They never ever bought a criminal case against him. That man went through his life waiting and waiting and waiting, and they never did.
SPEAKER_01And tell us about the emotional toll on Michael as your friend.
SPEAKER_002004 about the documentary, because the law had been changed, now you have to have a criminal case first before you can go for a civil case. So they had no choice. The visos had to go through criminal, then he got completely vindicated and they could go for money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Because, like, yeah, Macaulay Colkin, like it is a whole list of people were like, no, he never touched us. Like endless.
SPEAKER_00I mean, like my kids, all it's just all the same.
SPEAKER_01And they were friends, and you can understand it. I remember that I I will say that that I always thought so when I was young, and she's still one of my best friends, um yeah, my my best friend, she's 24 years older than me. And I was, you know, a teenager when we became like super, super close. She was a family friend, and and I could get it. I'm like, there are cases when you just match with a character and you just end up being really close. Yeah. And you know, someone like Michael, who never had that childhood, of course he stayed young and wanting to do fun things, and he loved children, and he was good with kids, so why wouldn't he be friendly with kids? Yeah, like any of us.
SPEAKER_00They didn't screw him over, and animals would screw him over either. That's why he liked animals. But this childhood thing, I had long conversations with him about that because none of his other brothers, you've got to remember Marlon is only a year different, Jermaine's a few years, they don't complain about their childhood.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they were not as famous, they were famous, Jackson Five, very similar age, they shared beds and stuff. But Michael made an effort to stay childhood because he believed that people, when they lose their childhood qualities, they lose their creative bit. And he said, if you look at most musicians or artists, they'll have one album and do three or four good singles, and then that'll be it. So he made an effort to only watch cartoons, not watch the news, uh, go to Disneyland to try and do whatever he could to stay keep that creative bit about him. And he said Steven Spielberg was like that. There's lots of people he named that will keep coming out of these hits over and over again because they did they refuse to admit their age and they they're losing this creativity. So yeah, we had that conversation at the back of a car, and I thought that was quite interesting that he had this.
SPEAKER_01And what about his voice? So my my kids asked me to ask this question. They said that yeah, that it's been said that you know, the very high voice and shy, and everything that he would do in interviews was part of the branding, and that really the chilled Michael at home wasn't quite like that.
SPEAKER_00I was on a podcast recently, and I so happened to have a voice note and I played it, and he the podcast was like, Wow, that's phenomenal.
SPEAKER_01It's not like him. No, it's not like what you see.
SPEAKER_00Like deep voice Michael, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I see it's true. My daughter said that she's like we had to remind him the like Paris Hilton is like that, for example. You know, I had someone, her X VR on this podcast, she's like, Yeah, Paris, the normal, and Paris Online, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was it was the mystery, it was the whole thing that he wanted everyone to be sucked into the mask, the sticky tape, the the um trousers that were too short, the loafers, the white socks, the one white glove.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's another question from the kids. Tell us about the white glove. Yeah, what was what was with the was it to cover up a skin thing? Was it just to be eccentric?
SPEAKER_00Because it was big and it had all the glitz on it, and then he had the glitzy socks, and your eyes would follow the the dance.
SPEAKER_01It would be okay to draw attention to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and why and also everything he did, he'd want people to ask why. So I questioned him once, what used to bother me was the sticky tape on his fingers when we used to go for meetings. I said, So, Michael, why why'd you put plasters on your on your fingers? And he goes, Well, you you just answered the question, you've asked why. I want the public to question, I want to stay relevant. And another time used to bother me a lot, too. I never had the guts to ask him why. And he picked up on it. We were waiting for hours for him to get ready to go for a meeting with Kofi Yanan, who was the head of the United Nations. This was a big deal for Michael, like a human humanitarian thing. And he came out of his bedroom and he looked ridiculous. And I was like, uh I can't even walk with my mate because the paparazzi are outside. This is for my career as well. This is just I didn't get paid for this, is it for free? Uh this could be damaging. And it was like all this sticky tape on his nose. And I was staring at him and he said, Matt, listen, I can see you're worried about my nose. Don't worry, it's not gonna fall off. It's perfectly fine. It's just allergy tape, and this allergy tape, the fossil dozzle outside, will take pictures, and it will be billions of dollars of media coverage that I can't buy over the next few days, which will make me relevant, fill out stadiums, more records, more money. That's all it is. Don't be concerned. That's all it is.
SPEAKER_01But in a way, it's like asking people to bully you, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but he told me he told me off once because uh America would ring me. Remember in the UK, especially. America would ring me, and the the tradition of the hotels in the UK, it doesn't so much happen anymore, especially the five star ones, is every daily paper would be pushed under your door. Do you remember those days? Yes, yes. You wake up, you've got all the papers, it'd be like 12 papers. So his American PA would ring me because they would know in the middle of the night, they'll keep an eye on it. Can you? Because we so we had connecting rooms. My room would be there, and then we had living room. And Michael's room would be opposite. Michael would always wake up very late, like two in the afternoon. So can you sneak into the room and get the newspapers and take out page nine to fifteen here? And on this, on the Daily Mirror, this this pages, and I saw it was the negative stories about Mike. And then I'll get back to himself, I've done it. Okay. And I'd left the papers there, done it. And I did this for for for years on end. And then we went for dinner at Mohammed Orfyad's house, the owner of Howard's.
SPEAKER_01And um we saw another controversial figure, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it always is when they die, though, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01No, before he was controversial like 20 years.
SPEAKER_00You think so? I don't know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think, yeah. Another anyway.
SPEAKER_00I'll tell you a story about him a minute, though. Remind me of that. But he um so Mohammed he invited us around for dinner, and we we went around there and um Michael sat next to me, and there was big names around the table, like Darrell Hanno and David Blaine and and uh Brittany Spears and people like that, and and uh and then he wanted to go sit by the fire. He said, Matt, do you want to come join me so I can sat by the fire? And um he was flicking through Hello magazine, and it was him. I said, Oh Mike, it's you he goes, Yeah, I I got a cameo and Man in Black 2, and it was him sneaking into the studios, dressed up, ready for men in black too. He's only in it for like 30 seconds, and I and he goes, Matt, can I tell you something? He said, Yeah, I like to read my own stories. So, what do you mean, Mike? So I get the newspapers in the morning, they go from page nine to fifteen, and I know you love me trying to protect me, but I spent hours coming up with these ways to manipulate the media, and I like to read my result of it. I said I thought it'd upset you. So, no, I don't care less. I've got rhinoceros skin. Like that's the name of the show business.
SPEAKER_01And so, really, because I stopped it from that day. I didn't know he's been painted as being, you know, very sensitive character, extremely shrewd, very like loving, overly passionate, um emotionally almost like quite weak. And so you're saying the opposite.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, ruthless. Yeah, you had two sides to Mike. You had the Catherine Jackson, gentle, very nice, loving soul, and then you had Joe, who was a ruthless businessman. Michael, he put his glasses on, put a suit and tie on. He would control the room in business meetings, he would be sacking fire, firing staff over the phone at Neverland, very much in control until the medication part came in. Then obviously that would waver his mind and stuff. But he was shrewd.
SPEAKER_01How did the medication affect? Because that all started after the Pepsi fire, didn't it?
SPEAKER_00I don't believe any of that nonsense. And and and people around him say the same thing too. He he took medication for emotional pain, not because of physical pain.
SPEAKER_01So again, there was emotional pain then.
SPEAKER_00Massive emotional pain. He was I never met anyone so lonely in in emotional pain in my life. I mean, the guy was the saddest person I've ever met. Just just his biggest competition was himself.
SPEAKER_01But why then? So he he was lonely, but he did have friends like you. He did get married, he did because we all know that side, it's been you know painted very widely that he was very lonely, you know, famous from a young age, he didn't know who to trust. But he had people around him. I mean, he had you, he had so many others.
SPEAKER_00As soon as you told told him though, something that you did he didn't want to hear, he would push you out, you'd be gone. I remember because people give me a hard time that why didn't you do more math? Why didn't you speak up? But I'm I'm like 24, 25 years old when it really goes wrong. And towards the end, I was like 2000, yeah, I was like 28. Like, who am I? I was a multimillionaire by that point, but who am I to tell a billionaire, megastar, the most famous man on earth, what to do. And it all I could do was push doctors out of the way and keep them at bay. But as soon as I did that, another one would get in. It would be a constant battle all the time. So he would listen to the doctors because they could create an attachment to him through medication and getting him addicted. And and we would all get pushed out and then have to try and find our way back in again. And he isn't someone you could just pick up the phone and say, hey, you know, dial him up and you're gonna get him. There was ways and means to get to Michael, the protection in place. Because people were trying to get to him every day, his fan base, the media. He couldn't have a mobile phone. We tried it, and and people, his managers, for the time I knew him, he went through 12 managers, and they all gave him like the latest iPhone gold plated in the hope that he would keep it. And uh he used to say to me, Matt, it's funny, when he when they empty that Lev Neverland lake one day, all they're gonna find is all these phones on the bottom where he's just lobbed, throwing them in the in the lake.
SPEAKER_01Why?
SPEAKER_00Because people media would get hold of it. Remember, they'd hack it, yeah. They would hack his cools and get older. He couldn't have a phone, it would be impossible. So we had they'd ring us, the bodyguards, passed messages to him in the hope that he had written.
SPEAKER_01And you didn't mention how how did it happen? So you became friends. How did he then say, Can you read my bodyguard?
SPEAKER_00It's naturally naturally it just happened. I I knew he was struggling financially. I could tell. He didn't tell me that I could see things were going wrong, bills weren't being paid, lawsuits were being issued, credit cards were being declined. I was picking up bills for some hotels as well, uh as well as some other people in his life too. And um in the end, I I I was in the living room with him and I just said, Listen, Mike, um, I want nothing from you, but when I go out on the six back then I had big muscles, so I ain't got that no more since I come to Cyprus. I'm more like longevity now, yeah. I don't want that be 20 stone of muscles, and I've got no need to be like that. So I I said to uh, I said, Mike, um, I want nothing from you, but everyone seems to take advantage from you. So his long-term security he had for like 15 years are gone.
SPEAKER_01Um what about the gentleman that was his like Bill Bray.
SPEAKER_00He left in 1995, so he was long gone before my era. Oh, he retired.
SPEAKER_01He retired, he retired, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Bill Bray was a retired um police officer, I believe, before he took on there, yeah. He died in 2005. Uh and so then he had uh uh brothers, Negan brothers, and they retired after going on all the tours with him. So then he was taken on this for a company. He didn't know who these security were, so he couldn't answer phones around them, he couldn't ring, you couldn't have conversations about getting in the media, and that was a big problem. So I just said, look, I've got I've got these schools, I've got uh they're running themselves, yeah, yeah, and and I've got access to bodyguards, security, and I'll pick up the bill. I think he told me he was paying $150,000 a month, which back then, if you think of early 2000s, that's probably inflation, half a million a month from now. And um, and when I was going out with him anyway, because I was a six-four big guy, I was end up hoarding my mate against the paparazzi in the scrums anyway. So I'm doing it for you anyway. So just let's just make it official, and uh, yeah, that's how it came about.
SPEAKER_01And how long were you his bodyguard?
SPEAKER_00So from I was very active from 2000 to 2000 until the allegations, because after the allegations, he needed a higher level. The Nation of Islam took over that because I'm not trained in guns or I've had no bodyguard training or nothing. So at that point, I stepped back and I was there as a friend, and for the rest of the life, his life until 2009, I would advise him and advise the people around him, but I was more of a friend, me and Mike Les would make go and visit him and he would come visit us at our houses and and just uh chill out and uh and how how was it when you saw him get more and more addicted to medication and you know the emotional and psychological turmoil that these court cases brought on him, the financial situation?
SPEAKER_01How was that watching your friend fall down that rabbit hole?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So there's never been a time where I've not known I've never seen him. I mean, Yuri Ghetto was very outspoken to my customers shout at him when we used to see him completely in trouble, you know, on a on a drip where a certain doctor would put something, Yuri would shout at him, and I'd be like, Well, I'm a witnessing it. It was very hard for me to understand. And he would always say it's okay because the doctor gave it to him, it's not drugs, it's medicine, and he needs it, he's in pain. And um, but yeah, he never complained about the sculpt thing to me ever. I mean, that was never it took me a long time to work. I mean, I was very naive because in the morning he would have short hair, and in the afternoon he'd have a ponytail, and I just thought his hairdresser was very good. I didn't think for one second that he was wearing wigs and stuff until I until we'd sweep the room, and then I saw the wigs all lined up. I thought, ah, okay. But um, yeah, the the doctors was along with the.
SPEAKER_01And did you ever see the the patch now? Because he always had it covered, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, he even like with me and anybody like the people who are closest to him, if he's like in a bathroom or something, he wouldn't want to see you like that. He'd yeah, if he wanted tough pace or towel, you he'd hide and put his hand through. He wouldn't let anyone see him like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Only the coroner. The only way I I've ever the coroner's done an interview on a podcast to see Michael at the Moultrie lab, and he confirmed he was bold and yeah, there was some damage there. But yeah, uh we he would never see us like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. I mean, I know people who are going bold naturally and just from Asia and they won't and they won't they won't let anyone see them, you know, they wake up and it happens.
SPEAKER_00Like Randy was bold at quite a young age, I believe. And yeah, just down to family genetics.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my whole family are bold.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, obviously not me, but believe it, believe it or not, I know people find it hard to believe.
SPEAKER_01But you think that was genetic, not from the burn?
SPEAKER_00I think it's combination.
SPEAKER_01Combination, yeah, probably expedition it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I never had a conf conversation with him ever about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you gave him that space. But how was it then watching him like deteriorate?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But he he would grab his ups and downs, depending on the doctors that were around him.
SPEAKER_01Um I but So as Michael's fans, and I'll say they're like very runny, so Michael was not gay.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00No. And he was But he couldn't care less if you thought he was.
SPEAKER_01He was okay with the playing the game.
SPEAKER_00Because Murotown Records used to say uh because he he made he would make this very strong with us that um that I don't want my fans to think I'm gay, straight. I wanted to keep them guessing because Murotown Records, he said, old school thinking, if you're married, you're gonna lose half your your fan base.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they made Marilyn and Monroe divorce immediately. I mean, not that but that whole era, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So he wanted to appeal to everyone, every race, every religion. You never talk hear Michael talk about religion or nothing. You talk about upper source.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, you'll talk about God, but he wouldn't say I used to say, Don't talk about race, religion, or politics.
SPEAKER_00Used to drum that into me all the time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But now he's not gay. He certainly was not gay. I was talking to one of his girlfriends the other night. Funny, I found a video last night.
SPEAKER_01So where did he meet the girlfriends then? If he was so secluded.
SPEAKER_00They were fans. They were fans who got to know him over over years. And there was there was a video I found last night. I showed my wife, and it's funny because she he refers to this girl, and I uh because he used to he used to point the girl that the code was fish. So he'd say, I want that fish, I like that fish. He goes, Oh, maybe I should bring can someone contact so-and-so and bring her booty up to my room. And I messaged her and said, uh, check this out. And I sent it to her, she goes, Oh, yeah, it's me, he's referring to, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01And what about his wives? Because there was a big thing that it was uh, you know, showmanced when he married. I think he's been honest with him.
SPEAKER_00Lisa was completely genuine, absolutely. Obviously, I would have been at school then, but I knew Mark, who's yeah, Mark was saying 68, Mark, my Mark would be 68 next month, too. And um, yeah, they were genuine. Yeah, Mark used to say to me, and other bodyguards, there was a lot of uh hee hee uh going on in the room next door. Yeah, they were proper in love and stuff, and that was real. That was you can understand how that could work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, they were both, they both grew up in very similar almost messed up worlds, but she wanted she went on record so she wanted the doctors away.
SPEAKER_00That was the issue. It was medication or me, you know, that was the problem. The vultures, she called it. And uh she was the uh she was still in contact though, right to the end.
SPEAKER_01So sad. She was sad. So and what about his skin?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Vitaligo.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Mr. Liger.
SPEAKER_00No one would believe him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no one believed him, and it was so common in colored people. Well, actually, I think now, um, with the you know, supermodels are very open about it. I've got to be a little bit more. There's a famous one now, right? Yeah, famous one, and I met another um lovely, lovely lady. I forgot her name, but she was Miss Egypt, and she's the same, and she's a model, and um, and it actually looks stunning, like I have to say. But then, no, it wasn't considered stunning.
SPEAKER_00No. So he went Oprah Winfrey and he tried to stamp that out. He tried to stamp it out.
SPEAKER_01Yes, but Oprah wasn't so. I didn't think she believed it, and she wasn't, she was very much proud of being black, and yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was funny though, because he he called me in another bodyguard in his room one time, and and uh he he was a bit drunk and he he said, uh guys, look at this. I'm a spotted cow. And he dropped his he called pants, he's American. You say trousers and his box of shorts and his legs were all patchy. Yeah, look, I'm a spotted cow. That's what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01I always found that weird because in the um oh I forget the n which song it was. The one with his in the deserts, um, when Naomi Campbell.
SPEAKER_00Oh Naomi, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um in the closet.
SPEAKER_01That that that that that song.
SPEAKER_00Um Keep it in the closet, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, at one stage his tops off and he's like completely white or showing the white, but his feet are showing and his feet were like black. Yeah, they're and I was like, and I remember being a teenager and thinking he must be like from the upper part, like bleached his skin, yeah. He's just not bothered with the well makeup.
SPEAKER_00So when we saw him with our top off when he was getting changed, he would be always be put blotchy. Yeah, but then the makeup part is she was very good, and she would make sure that that would be covered up and stuff.
SPEAKER_01And that's why I had to always have the umbrella, I guess.
SPEAKER_00There's no pigmentation protection, so yeah, whenever the sun was out.
SPEAKER_01But was his face in the end patchy or was it all white?
SPEAKER_00Um, so what happened in the end is that it spread and then it started getting you will there is pictures out there, you can find it. The media will never show you it, but if you go online, it's very simple to find. It started getting patchy. So his makeup artist told me it got to the stage where I I couldn't do it no more because they were using what's the correct terminology? Coloured makeup? I guess you can't say black no more.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just coloured, like darker, darker foundation.
SPEAKER_00To to smooth it, and it was working really well. But when Michael's on stage, he don't understand everyone's forming, he's sweating, so it was no longer working. A decision he had to make, so he decided in the end to to eat go the whole way. I mean, he had no choice, and uh whatever it came out in his death, whatever he he was in the it found in his room, whatever he was using, whatever cream he was using.
SPEAKER_01He was doing like a like some kind of bleach or something to like get the pigmentation, the dermatologist prescribed with Dr.
SPEAKER_00Arnie Klein. He should have been in jail, he should have gone down, but he passed away. Um, a famous dermatologist that Elizabeth Taylor introduced him into. But um, he was the main cause of his death, if I'm honest with you. That guy was just hooked him up to anything he wanted to to stay in his life, but yeah, he was one of those powerful dermatologists in Hollywood. No one wanted to touch him. All about who you know, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and yeah, and and they were never prosecuted, were they, his doctors?
SPEAKER_00Um, Comrade Murray went to jail. He got sentenced to four years of manslaughter and he served two, and he came out, revoked his medical license. I believe he's appealing his conviction now. I spoke to him after he came out of jail. He just blames Dr. Klein because what was going on is that Michael would go, Michael would be nocturnal with all of us anyway, stay up all night, blasting his music out, keeping us awake, and then we'd have to stay awake somehow in the daytime or catnap. And then um, so he would go to the dermatologist in the in the morning and get aesthetics done, which is now considered extremely normal. Back then it was controversial. And there was things, there was things that were starting to become available. This doctor, Dr. Klein, was like the father of Botox and aesthetics, that he could do stuff to reconstruct what I'm told, so that Michael, the damage that had been done by these these outrageous surgeons, they were refixing that. But they were hooking him on a drip every day of Demerol, which they give to women for childbirth. It's called pephidine. And it's morphine related. And if you take that for longer than like a few days, you you will get addicted to it. Yes. So this doctor could not come to London to the Oto Arena residency. So the other doctor wasn't talking to the other one. So Dr. Conrad Murray went to jail thought he was treating Michael for a serious case insomnia, when in fact he should have took Michael had he known what he was dealing with, this with withdrawal drug to uh opiate, he would have taken him to uh rehab and treated him different. Yeah. I still couldn't forgive Dr. Comrade Murray on the phone call, like you know, he still killed my mate, you know, or whatever. He he believes Michael woke up and twisted the drip and flooded his body with the anesthetic and killed himself by mistake. That's what he believes happened. And he blames Dr. Comrade. How do you know that Conrad Murray was uh had Conrad Murray known that Arnie Klein was filling with Demerole all day, then he would have treated him very differently and Michael would still be here today. That's his defense. Or Michael woke up panicked because he only gave him a tiny bit, he claimed certainly 25 milligrams, and he turned the drip because as soon as that infusion stopped, it's it's it's crazy to think of it's the stuff that you get when we go for operations. Yeah, he was having that 90 days in a row to go to sleep. It's not real sleep either. No, so he was exhausted, so yeah, it wouldn't be beyond thinking that Michael would would wake up, doctor's not in the room, twist it, not really noise what he's done, flood the body.
SPEAKER_01But so you don't think he was killed?
SPEAKER_00No, well, I it's I we're never gonna know this whole towards the end, it was just lawsuit after lawsuit, falling out with Sony Music, the head of Sony Music, protesting outside Sony Music's offices with big red buses and double decker buses, you know, and um appear uh really pushing Tommy Matola, the head of Sony Music to be sat, calling him a racist in public. He had a lot of death threats. We'd have a death threat a day on average, and it's not like social media or trolling, this was like under your door stuff at hotels.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, so people would be there.
SPEAKER_00Don't get too much. My brother-in-law would be the the guy who would be the the bodyguard outside Michael's door all night while he was supposed to be sleeping, and um yeah, the amount of people you had to turn away who would try and get to him. It was a different era back then, but we'll never know. I think what what's interesting is that wherever we went, Michael was I'd never had any form of bodyguard training, but he he was the greatest teacher. So any hotel we stayed, the camera would go up, the comings and go-ings of to make sure we knew who's in Michael's room, uh, if he's okay, if anyone snuck in, we'd check his bedroom beforehand and so on. And same in his private residency, too. So Neverland has cameras all over the place. There's there's like 50 security guards there. When Michael walks round his home garden, he couldn't walk around on his own because people would parachute in and say, Oh, I don't know where we are, in the hope to meet him, you know. So an alarm would get hit, and he would have to run to the panic room, which they say is the secret sex chamber of his bedroom. It was the panic room, like all billionaires have, and celebrities of his of his caliber. Um, but yeah, it was uh it was an ongoing situation. It was a life you would never want to live. Michael's life was anything but glamorous. It was just back walk walking through the most grubbiest kitchens, awful lifts in hotels, shocking the chefs and the cooks when we walked through, because he couldn't go through the front entrance because he would get mobbed. It was there was nothing, and people were out for his money. He he was the most powerful man in music, he owned half of Sony Music Publishing. Yeah, MM songs, Beyoncé songs, some of Alvish Presley's, the Happy Birthday song, you know, um Beatles Beatles catalog.
SPEAKER_01And that's why it's so shocking because he was a good businessman, he owns so much, and yet he was you know on the brink of financial ruin.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um trusted the wrong people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But I mean his kids are fine now.
SPEAKER_00Now the the estate's worth again four or five billion in credit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Mad, isn't it? He died 500 million in debt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but now, like, yeah. It's um and I think another thing I think people find weird, and again, it's the whole mystery around, but you know, when he said, like, oh my kids are colored, like, you know, they're as white as white can be. Yeah. And he was insisting, again, maybe that's again to get the controversy around. And I don't I don't personally I don't care either way. It makes no difference to me that someone's colour of skin, or um, but he was so adamant about that. Um, and I think people just always thought, oh, what is the story? Is he lying? When is he telling the truth? You know.
SPEAKER_00We we went shopping once, me and my my ex-wife, Marcia and her sons, my stepsons, we went shopping with him at Hamley's Toy Store in London, and they shut it down for us. And he kept on saying to me, I wasn't in bodyguard capacity, we're we're just I was just in jeans and a t-shirt, and we're just going out. He promised he'd take my boys out and um and he wanted to buy some toys for his kids too, Prince in Paris. And as we're going around Hamley's, he kept on saying, Matt, can you get that the baby would like that? Right. Yeah, no problem. I said to my ex talking about this baby, I don't know what he's on about. I don't just never refer to to um Prince or Paris as babies. Because he'd say Paris would like that doll. Prince is mad into Spider-Man. Can you get that for Spider-Man? And they literally go like that, you know? And then it's and the baby would like that, and I thought, God, this is fascinating. And then I get back and so confused me and Marcy always. And then and then we find out he's just got this baby, just turns up. Yeah, and I didn't ask about it because who might have questioned him, but this baby just turned up called blanket. Like, here's my baby. I said, Michael, whose baby is that? It's mine. Okay. But it's a different world. I don't know. And a lot a lot of the fans and the staff around him say. That he he didn't want his children to look like Joe Jackson. That's what they used to say. But I I don't know. I I got no idea why.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you didn't ask about the genetics or the things.
SPEAKER_00But a lot of his friends still believe they still are insistent that they are biologically his kids. That it can happen. There is evidence. But three times, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, who knows? And tell us about the news, because again, we do know it's very well documented that Joe Jackson was quite abusive, father. Um not definitely not a 2026 father. It was very much a different era. Um, yeah, was you know quite rude to his kids and he called him big nose. And I guess all the children suffered, you know, it wasn't just Michael.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's interesting you say that because Jackie, I spent they spent time at my house in Devonland for weeks on end, and I spent a lot of time with the brothers, apart from Marlon and Randy. Uh Jackie, Jermaine, Tito always used to say to me, our dad did nothing different to what every other parent was doing in the area. Yeah, and that's this was the toughest place that you could live. You you if you're not strict on your kids, you're dead or in jail, like Michael used to say. And um he did Joseph did the right thing. And Michael is sensitive. That's the only difference. Michael was very if Michael watched Kids in Africa dying on TV or he caught the end of a programme, he would cry. Tito, Jermaine, Jackie had that toughness about them. They wouldn't do that. I remember Jermaine taking on Stephen Sagal once on a red carpet and um Tito being behind him saying, I don't know what we're gonna do because Jermaine Stephen Segal was a top martial artist, but he said something bad about Michael, and that's that's how tough they were. Whereas Michael would be the shy, sensitive one. So they never complained about their childhood to me. Yeah, they said it was just thank God he did what he did because it would be. And they all got treated the same. They said Marlon got it the worst because Marlon couldn't keep up with Michael's ability, so Marlon would get the whip in the worst, but he would never complain about his dad in that way. You see interviews about him. Actually, Michael used to say that too on TV. So I didn't get it the worst, Marlon did. But all everyone back then was treated like that. But they they all they were fine. They yeah, I was in the car when he forgives his dad in 2000 and um Oxford Union to do a speech in 2001. And um he said, I understand where you come for where you were coming from back then, and I'm a father now, and I'm going to Oxford Union to do a speech. I'm very sorry for some of the things I said about you, and he and he says, I love you. And he put the phone down, and then and then he looked out the window and he said to all of us, I think that's the first time the first time I've told Joseph that I love him. Yeah, and then from that point onwards, his dad was by his side by the trial, sleeping by his bed, completely roofless to the end, protecting, trying to keep the vultures away from his son.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. And and what about the nose? Like, why did he go so OTT with his nose?
SPEAKER_00Well, when when when we would see him behind just get addicted, like a tattoo, I guess.
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Well, when we would see him behind, so he would go to great lengths to make himself look ridiculous. That was the thing. So so when we'd see him in his living room when he would take the jacket off that you see him with all the gold on it and everything, whack a pair of jeans and his t-shirt on, and you see him as Michael, you could see that plastic surgery, but not to the ridiculous nature that that he would be photographed with, because he did that on purpose. He'd put extra makeup on and prosthetics on to get the media coverage.
SPEAKER_01He'd also put prosthetics on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's the ultimate thing. After the baby dangling thing in um Yeah, what was that?
SPEAKER_01Tell us about that.
SPEAKER_00That was just Martin Bashir. Martin Bashir was in the room, and uh there was a doctor there, and um we're in the living room, there was nothing abnormal going on other than Mike. They were chanting like crazy to see the kids. And um Who?
SPEAKER_01Martin Bashir and the other. No, they're fans. Oh, the fans.
SPEAKER_00He was there, we were there for the uh Bambi Awards. I was I wasn't in bodyguard mode because I think I just my wife just had a baby, I had to get back. But um, yeah, me and Mike Lester were in the living room. We were talking to Michael, and Bashir comes in and says, uh, you've got so many fans there, let them see the kids, you know, it'd be great footage. And and then uh Michael didn't think it was a good idea because what had happened in the hotels is that all the other guests who are staying there, they pay a fortune, would complain they can't sleep because the fans would chant all night. Michael, Michael, all night, and it they want their money back. So we have this agreement with the hotel that Michael would not go near the window. If they so much to see his silhouette, that's it. They're chanting all night. No one's getting any sleep. So this this was this was an afternoon where Bashir was filming, just started filming, so this was so he got the okay to go June. This must have been like October time, and um Michael went off with a doctor and he came back in not a good state. He was uh fair to say he was high as a kite. If you go back and watch Living with Michael Jackson, you would see him with blanket, and he's like, blanket, blanket, hold him around.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I saw that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Lisa Marie, when she was alive, she she mentioned this too. That that was him in a a high state, like a effigrine type of upper, due to him being nervous about something, you know. So at that point, um Bashir was directing him, and then he took Prince and Paris out, they screamed and waved, and they didn't show their faces because that was what Debbie Rowe wanted, that they never they would leave a normal life, go to the park with a nanny, and then come back. And then um Mom was like, Oh, I think you should show the baby. And he's like, I don't think I should. And he was high, he's speaking real high too. I didn't don't think I should show that the baby might scare the baby, the noise in the crowd. It'd be great footage for the camera and everything. And so, so now we know what we know. Years later, there's this one particular shot that got released very quick to the news wire, very good angle, perfectly placed. They didn't know this was coming, the fans, all the media, so they couldn't have prepared themselves to get it. So, what we think happened is Bashir sent his camera crew down there.
SPEAKER_01And pushed him.
SPEAKER_00The doctor and him worked together, possibly, and uh and that happened, and uh he he dangled. There is no justification for what he did that day. We didn't know what happened because we were inside the room. They screamed for it, they went crazy for it. He came back in, he sat with us, then he went off to have a sleep as this medication worn off. And then um the German media, we went back to our own rooms. The German media reported Michael Jackson was showing the his baby to the world. They're a different type of media than the UK media. UK and America media, we're starting to get phone calls from America then saying, um, please can you keep Mr. Jackson away from the TV? Because the rest of the world are saying that he put his child at harm, he's a child abuser, the child should be taken off him. Yeah, and it went crazy. And in the end, I don't I think it was Mark who told him in the end what how the world was perceiving it, and he apologised, he said what was done wrong. And yeah, and it's funny because we we went back through uh London because he had to go on to I think he was going on to Paris, and uh we went around Harrods, and on the way there, we went past Hyde Park, famous park in London, and he's looking out the wind window. He he was really damaged by the media coverage to that, and there was this dad of his child, he was throwing his kid right up in the air high and catching him throughout him, and he goes, He used to say, Matt, Mark, look at that. I wouldn't be able to do that. If I did that, it would be uh Michael Jackson abused his child and put his kid at risk. He said, There's one rule for me and another rule for the rest of the world. But he wouldn't defend him what he did, he he didn't know he did it wrong, but that was medication there.
SPEAKER_01So sad for Lisa Marie as well. She wouldn't, you know, or didn't witness it, but knew that that's what her dad had been through.
SPEAKER_00And then she tried so hard too, from what I understand.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, to try and get the vultures away. And she spoke out about the Bashir thing. That that Michael was was on medication. I know him more than anyone. He was my husband. He was on medication with the baby. He should who's given him that, you know? But yeah, that doctor's still alive and uh practicing for what I understand.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely insane. So moving past to Michael Jackson, because my goodness, I have a a lot, a lot to I'll leave one for the end, but then tell us about your life post-Mael. Then Michael passed away. I can only imagine how painful that was for you.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Especially watching it almost happen in slow motion, just go downhill, downhill, and then hearing the news. Tell us about how you found out when he died.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I I spoke to him two nights before because we were getting everything ready in London, ready for the O2 residency. It was 50 shows, it was 52 shows. And um, to be honest with you, none of us believed that he was gonna be able to pull it off. But he wanted to beat Prince's record, 21 shows there, as in the artist prince, not Michael's show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And um he called and my ex answered the phone. Um said, Michael's on the phone, but he don't sound too good. So I took the phone and um it was a landline, and he said uh he said to along the lines of um Matt, I need to get hold of Joseph. And I he said, Do you know where Joseph is? And I said, I do. He's in Las Vegas, I've got his number. And I gave him Joseph's number. And he goes, uh, where's Mark? I said well Mark was in his best friend, Mark Lesnar. I said, Mark is in Cheltenham at the moment. Do you want his number? So yeah. I said, Michael, what's going on? What why are you sounding like this? And we've we've been getting panic calls from from people over there saying he's not turning up to rehearsals and he's not right, he's not making sense.
SPEAKER_01And well, he also made a call to his um his doctor, was it a dietitian or nutritionist, saying that they're after me, they're gonna get me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you've heard that one. Yeah, yeah. And to former managers, too, he left out some phone messages that they still got to this day saying that yeah, there's something going on here, it's just not right. And and his biggest comp complaint was first of all, he said, Matt, they they give the doctor, I've got a doctor looking after me. And uh and don't worry, I'm fine. They're giving me effigy, meaning a doctor, which is not abnormal for a dancer to get or a bodybuilder to take, to give them that a little edge. Because uh, if I don't perform tonight, they're gonna pull the show, which will put me in bankruptcy. So, okay, all right, as long as you're okay, he goes, Yeah, I've got a doctor with me, I'm fine, don't worry, I'm actually fine, but I need to speak to Joseph. He's the only one who can sort this bleep out. And um thought, God, Banak. And he goes, Can I speak to Madison? Which is uh my restaurant, so he spoke to Madison for a bit, then he spoke to Lola, and he came back on the phone to me. He he didn't like so much beg me, but he was trying, anyway you can come to California, okay. Come to Los Angeles at the moment and come and hang out. I'm like, Mike, I my my wife was knocking out kids. Like, you know, I had done kid number three, which had a baby. I've got a big business, multi-million-pound company. I can't keep just dropping and leaving. I'm seeing you in 10 days' time. Um, he said, and he said, Okay, I'll ask Mark then. I totally understand. And that's the last I ever heard from Michael.
SPEAKER_01Do you regret it?
SPEAKER_00Uh, not going out. No, I did at the time after we passed away, but then I thought about it, and um, I wouldn't have got past the promotional company security, they wouldn't let me in. They were keeping us all away because we would have got Michael out of there. Because his family were trying to get to him too. Janet, Jermaine, Jermaine, especially, they they were turning up unannounced. Joe did as well, Joseph Jackson, um, to to perform an intervention to get him out. Because we were hearing from the people we could trust that he was in a very, very bad way. Uh, but we couldn't get to him unless he got hold of us, his numbers were taken away from him.
SPEAKER_01Who who was they?
SPEAKER_00Um, the concert promoters, the uh people that put on the show, AEG. They were basically paying for his home, paying for everything. They were controlling what his day-to-day schedule would be. By this point, he had no money. It was never landed long gone, five, four years gone. And um, yeah, he had to do what they say. Uh and how he got hot, our number is that we had a mutual friend who's who he kept on, who leaked the numbers, and so on. But yeah, I I kind of had I gone, I don't think I would have got past AEG, they're called their security people. It's not because Michael didn't have a landline number that he didn't know what the landline number was, he didn't really know where he was staying or anything. So yeah, and we didn't know the doctor that well or the people around. We just when Michael called us, he called us.
SPEAKER_01It was like living it living the life of a prisoner.
SPEAKER_00Well, we had to do what he said. He was employed by them, he was working for them, and they were paying him a lot of money, you know, and they would remind him of that. They would they would say things to him like, remember, you know, we we pay for the food you're you're eating and and uh toilet paper you use. They actually use those words to him, more graphic than that, and reminded him that if this goes down, you don't do this tour, Michael, then you know, we're you're over, you're finished, you know, and uh he was not in a fit state to do that. So he had people around him who didn't need the money, who are trying to do what they can. But I don't think I would have got past security. But yeah, how I found out is I come back from uh my head office, get home, the kids run to me, I sit on the certain room floor, check the news, and then um nothing really special happens. Then Yuri Geller calls me because he's more famous than me in the UK, he's like the go-to person for Michael Jackson back then. The media were all ringing him like mad, saying that Michael Jackson was in a coma. And can he confirm it's true? So Michael was Yuri Geller's best man at his wedding, they were super close. And uh he called me and I said, This and Yuri, I spoke to him a couple of nights ago. This is Michael doing his thing. I'm not gonna ring him up again, him saying, Told you so, the publicity he's done. I'm uh make for him to say you fall into my trap. He goes, Yeah, you're right, Matt. You're right. It's too much of a coincidence. He said, I didn't sound happy, but he sounded like he's fine. He certainly didn't sound like he's gonna go into a coma by any means. And the feedback from his performance was unbelievable. He did the best show he's ever done. AG were happy, it was incredible. Then again, 20 minutes later, Yuri calls again. He said, Matt, I'm I'm back home now, and the landlines were ringing off the hook. It's Fox News, it's Larry King, all the American World Networks. They're all saying he's had a heart attack and he's in a coma. The people I know personally that are vouching he's he's he's at hospital. I said, Okay, um I I'll ring uh Mark. Mark was the closest to him because Mark Mark's children, like I said, grew up with Michael's children. He's their godfather, uh Michael's their godfather. And I put the phone down to to Yuri to go to ring Mark to see what's going on. And then I didn't have to. By that point, the phone was ringing, Mark Lester, I knew. He said, Where are you? I said, I'm at home. So I know you're gonna tell me. He's gone, any? And he goes, Yeah, he's gone. Yeah. So the nanny was screaming down the phone, he's gone, he's gone, he's dead, he's dead. And we didn't know anything else. And and it took hours to to reach the news because no one wanted to be the one to break it. Because if it had it been one of his famous publicity stunts, they would have a massive lawsuit on their hand. So other than TMZ, we went for it, I think. The they waited for the Los Angeles um coroner to and it came out for new New York for the uh Los Angeles Times, LA Times, and and then it went from coma to pronounce dead at 50. And then my god, it was mayhem after that. It was like, geez, I never experienced anything like a tabloid frenzy for years. They can say what you want because you can't defame a dead person. They had this is the media's chance now to make some serious money off Michael Jackson's brand, and they really went for him, yeah. And anyone associated with him, we had helicopters going over our house, it was mental. It was probably the cause, one of the other than me being a workaholic, one of the causes of my divorce, because it was just who'd want to put up with that? The spotlight was on us now, not on him, you know, and his family too. Yeah, but it was uh he he was he was gone long before he was taken to the hospital, long before. So, yeah, it was devastating for us. We all received counseling, but they didn't know what how to deal with us because they'd never experienced anyone. Everywhere you went, his music was playing again, his records were selling out. The show that he wanted on the West End suddenly was commissioned. His music was everywhere you looked, they couldn't stock it fast enough. It was unbelievable what was going on, and they were harassing me. How did he go? What the hell happened, you know? And yeah, and uh it never stopped. And even now, like 17 years later, it's still bigger than ever. It's bigger than ever. But yeah, that's how I found out, and uh yeah, it was painful, but you we could we learned to my my life turned because I went from being a business mogul, entrepreneur, property investor, having the largest in my sector in the world and my my brand, which Michael taught me to do. He taught me to go from six locations, now we've got 2058 locations around the world. He taught me that through franchising, brand building. And um, I went from this business guru to to whenever they write about me now, it's Michael Jackson's bodyguard. That was like a short period of my life, which I've had to learn to live with. I've embraced it. I spoke to Alfred Pres Alvis Presley's uh bodyguard, he's also a martial artist, Bill Wallace, and he lost um one of the blues brothers guys, is it John Belushi? Yeah, so he lost him on his watch, and he lost uh Alvis Presley too. And uh he's like, Matt, get over it, embrace it, you know. And um he teases me, so you could have done more for Michael. So you can talk, you lost Alvis Presley and the Blues Bruce brothers, you know. But yeah, it's something I'll have to live with. I think it's never gonna go away now, especially with the movie. It's just like blown up even more.
SPEAKER_01People are just so interested because it is it is an interesting story, and it's not okay, it's Michael Jackson, but it's your life and it's your personal experiences with that. So I think it's a holistic thing, it's you and him, and that the truth behind it.
SPEAKER_00And I think I'm Bill Bray.
SPEAKER_01The world's the funny thing.
SPEAKER_00So they so they look for Bill Bray, realize he's not there, then they stumble across me, and um, then they start following me.
SPEAKER_01So I was like the next one along yeah, because he was in the movie, he's the really famous one, he was almost like a father figure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So they think I'm Bill Bray, a lot of them, until they realise I'm not, and then they fascinate. Okay, well, what can you tell us? Are you gonna be in the next movie? What's this? Is this true? Is that true? And Bill's not alive no more.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and uh yeah, I was just uh If you if you think Michael was alive now, what do you think he'd want the world to know?
SPEAKER_00Um, it wouldn't be any different to what he wanted the world to know, what he was trying to achieve, which is like if you asked Michael what his favourite songs would be Be Heal the World, We Are the World, an earth song. He wanted world peace and to stop um wars going on and everyone to get on with each other for parents to spend more child time eating at the dinner table with their kids. He's real tough on me with that. I never had my first alcoholic drink until I was 27. That's how tough he was on me with business and and and so forth. And he would he'd want everyone to know that um yeah, he he did his best, but he couldn't communicate his message out because he was reliant back then on getting a journalist he could trust to relay that back in a publication with today's technology. He could get this straight out, yeah. But it wouldn't be around nothing.
SPEAKER_01He'd be on social media just saying lives and everything, and he'd have more of that report. He wouldn't be so reliant on other people, straight to it.
SPEAKER_00Put rumors out instantly, they wouldn't even dare go there, would they? No, there'd be none of this next time.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I know um goodness, was it Corey Fieldman? And then there was uh one of the okay, not obviously obviously um Macaulay Colkin, but there I think there was another one. They said, Yeah, they got back to the oh that was it. The um the boy he also died, the YouTuber. Um, oh my goodness, I've gone blank. But he got back to, you know, after spending time with Michael, and the mum was like, Oh, the police are here, why don't you tell them?
SPEAKER_00Oh Aaron.
SPEAKER_01Aaron. Yeah. And he's like, nothing. Yeah, he's like, no, no, you you tell them like what we know, and he's like, What do I know? Like, I don't know anything.
SPEAKER_00They'd do that with me too. They they'd always be like that. They're like uh it was it was nuts. Me and my the the latest accusers, I mean that's still going on, so I won't go into it too much, but if they could just in case they call me as a witness or something, but I I call Mark up because this family now are coming out him, uh and they were like the closest to Michael Jackson. They had like another level. He they're like his second family. I wasn't say they're his first family, that's how close they were. And one of them in particular, I was I shared a hotel suite we spent a lot of time with and so on. I called Markup, I said, Can you believe this person is accusing this? And Mark said, It's ridiculous, isn't it? We might as well say we've been molested. It's getting silly now, it really is. But but yeah, the age.
SPEAKER_01Were you ever called as a witness? You've never been called as a witness.
SPEAKER_00Um, I was ready to go for the visa case, but I was not needed. Uh Michael's attitude with me there was that I was in a difficult position because I got one of the biggest children's brands in the world. He didn't really want to bring me in less he had to. He didn't need to. It was hands down, damp with Macaulay Colkin and everyone else. But had I had he wanted to meet, I would have gone. Definitely. But this case, what's going on now, they couldn't.
SPEAKER_01And there was that other one, the dancer and the other guy, and and they yes, and they did the Netflix, but that was like 10 years ago. And they were like originally saying he didn't, and then they changed to he did.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because the statute of limitations in America, if you get past seven years, you can't be done for perjury. So they waited ten years and then said it. Um, but yeah, we called them out. They are they ain't got leg to stand on. We did a the estate wanted us to do um this. This uh documentary, there's two. There's one called Square One, there's one called Chase the Truth, and we we talk about it, and it was discovered the allegations that they make happen. They said it happened in a train station, and um by that point, these lads would have been way in their mid-20s. They found the plan permission approval of the train station, the train station was even built. Elizabeth Taylor's wedding was held there, so they got aerial shots, but the train station's not there.
SPEAKER_01So this was all lies.
SPEAKER_00They couldn't have been abused in the train station because there was no train station, yeah. And there's loads of examples I could tell you about that. But yeah, people go and watch uh Chase the Truth or Square One, you you'll get to the bottom of what happened there.
SPEAKER_01But why do you think people were so much after him? What was it? Like, I mean, obviously he was famous, they could say easy to target people after money, but I mean they really wanted to take this man down.
SPEAKER_00Most powerful man on earth, and when you think about it, there was 20 to 30,000 children with bust through Neverland per year, like for Make a Wish Foundation. That's why he built it. And uh it's how many are we we having to deal with? It's it was two, and now this family, now that's it. There's no one else, and all of them are you're never gonna get a rich family accusing. It's always the ones who are I think they're privileged to having something, you know. They're broke, they ran out of money, the money's gone. They've always been reliant on Michael, and they feel like they're they they they should be given something. You're never gonna find a rich family uh who've accused him of anything. But now there's there's only these three. There's never been anything else. Um he's the most powerful, and and since he's since he's passed away, you couldn't name them. You know, not many of them they're not may not be famous all around the world, but in the UK, there's like one after the next after the next now. It's just especially when people pass away, they they go after them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Go back to Mohammed or facts, yes. So Mohammed, I was close to him Mohammed, and and um he was a mentor of mine in on the business side, amazing guy, and uh he would always be very protective of Mike and everyone around him, and so on. And I lost contact with passed away as he's like 93 or something like that. He had dementia, yeah. And the connection there obviously is Dodie of I had and Michael were friends and Princess Diana. So that was the connection, and Yuri was good friends with him too.
SPEAKER_01Um but was he was he very close with Princess Diana or they just kind of knew each other?
SPEAKER_00I know it's super close, yeah. They were oh yeah, Prince Charles used to get um well King Charles now, he used to get jealous of the amount of hours you'd spend on the phone. Michael said he was she was the only person that could understand him at that level of fame, yeah. And he he was devastated, he said it was his ideal wife, but um, yeah, there there was blocks put on communication with her, and he got banned from seeing Prince William and Harry. We were already in London, it was already organized, and uh Prince Charles put a stop to that, you know. So yeah, yeah, but yeah, Mohammed Al-Fad, I was dating a so after my divorce, I was dating a girl who went out for dinners with Mohammed Al-Fad and his family numerous times, numerous occasions, and then years later, now suddenly come out with allegations that would have been mentioned to me, would have been naturally mentioned to me. I mean, she was my girlfriend, you know, at the time. It was never mentioned, never, never tell me again.
SPEAKER_01Sorry, you were dating.
SPEAKER_00This person's famous, so I've got to be very careful and not tread around. Yeah, all right.
SPEAKER_01So there was someone you were dating and okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And we would go out for dinner to Mohammed or Fayette, and everything would be nice and pleasant, and no, there'd be no allegations. Surely something would have been said to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And uh and she accused him.
SPEAKER_00Just jumped on the bandwagon, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So yeah, I I've never seen anything with Michael or Mohammed or anybody that would I think Mohammed the the royal family were just not not fans.
SPEAKER_01I think the whole of the UK, and he was obviously extremely bitter because he was I mean, it was his dream to have a British passport and he was denied it after buying like the biggest asset and the most famous one in London.
SPEAKER_00And and it was a different era too. What happened back then in like the 70s, 80s? You wouldn't get away with now in 2026. It's not objected to the norm. There was no safeguarding policies, nothing. Yeah, women would want to sleep with him because he was a multi-billionaire. You know, if Michael, same with Michael, the same with a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01That the fame screopies, the fame, people were there.
SPEAKER_00They can't do that anymore. I I got friends who are superstars and celebrities who are terrified that the police are gonna knock on our door each day for what happened in the 80s. Yeah, Russell Brand is a good example.
SPEAKER_01Russell Brand, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00He's been yeah, you know, he he can't remember what this girl or anything. He you know, it's and he's facing trial over something that happened in '93 or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I I try not to take part in it. Like Piers Morgan wanted me on for this um this about the Netflix thing. I couldn't add anything to it. I just thought it's I've lived through that pain with my and also Piers Morgan is another one.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I know people who know him and they say he's clever and he's not that bad.
SPEAKER_00He's very pro-Micha, though, Jackson fan.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he really does believe but he can be really on the interview, he can just go for the juggle on some things, and then yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree to it initially, then I backed out. I just thought I I don't want to be getting involved in this. And it's what I got a big brand and it's over. It was 21 years ago, and I lived through that. Michael nearly died on us, I'm surprised he survived the trial. Um Pierce, he knows the truth. Actually, the episode didn't do very well. Tom Mezzaro, the defence lawyer, did a very good job.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I saw, yeah, they're with um Piers Morgan.
SPEAKER_00And then the other lawyer who defended, and he's flip-flop now, was representing uh this new family that's come out.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really?
SPEAKER_00Mark Garagos, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Which other lawyer, they're not the family one.
SPEAKER_00But so the the the Avisa one, yeah, initially was Mark Garagos, who was in the Netflix documentary. Um Michael wanted someone dedicated to him because Garagos was busy with other cases and supported Michael for years and years and years, and then introduced him to Mesero, Tom Mezzerot, and um was for a period of time representing the Cassio family, this family now, to bring a case against the Michael Jackson state for money for a quarter of a billion dollars. Uh, I believe, I believe Mike Garagos has now dropped that case and handed it to someone else. But I wasn't gonna go and Peter Morgan's Ps Morgan's panel where Tom Mesero was not willing to be part of the panel. Garagos is supporting the Cassio family or believe in it when it he was Michael's defence lawyer initially, and and the other person had a vendetta against Michael, in my view. Never knew Michael as far as I was concerned. There was no substance to it, so yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Better to stay out of it and let your friend rest in peace.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my franchise business partners too. I put I went on Zoom with them, guys. Do you want me to do this? Because if I do it, if you obviously, please leave it alone, Matt. It's not worth the energy. Yeah, yeah. It just adds eyeballs to it, something that's not there. Michael's not here to defend himself.
SPEAKER_01So what's one of what's the funniest thing Michael ever did that would surprise fans?
SPEAKER_00Um, he's such a prankster. I think I think the the the biggest thing he did to me was the uh he stitched me up with the phone call. He did it to other staff members. We didn't realise it until until I came out of it. But he um we would get phone calls from the media all the time, trying to they get my number. We'd change our numbers every three to four weeks because of Michael. And they I don't know how they get the number, they had the phones, basically. That's how they did it. A famous publication called The News of the World.
SPEAKER_01News of the World. Oh my goodness, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So they would call me, and my phone was with me at the time, and we're on the motorway, and it's on hands-free speaker, and they said, Listen, we'll give you a million pounds if you get a picture of Michael's children. Because I know you're seeing Michael Jackson in the next few weeks. And I said, This, I won't turn on my mic, thank you very much. I made my own money. My business is worth 100 million plus. I got no need to make any money. Uh, I'm gonna tell Michael about this, and um, and you guys are disgusting, honestly. You you've got to change. And I hung up on it, and my friend is like, Well, what world you live in in, you know, he's one of my franchisees, Chris. And I tried to get hold of Michael and I couldn't get him. But um, anyway, we got got in the limo when I saw him a couple weeks ago, and I I remembered it, and I said, Oh, Mike, I've got to tell you something. So, what is it? There's a ransom on the children um of a million pounds if they get a picture. They offered me a million pounds, would you believe it? Of of them being unmasked. He goes, Really about it? So, yeah. What did they say? And I said, Exactly that. That's that's what they wanted, the unmasked in that. He goes, Oh, right. And he started crying. I said, You okay? He goes, Yeah, yeah, I'm just so glad you're loyal to me, because it was me. Yeah, you put a voice on, I was just testing you. Yeah. And he did he did it to some other staff too, and he did it to another bodyguard as well. And um, in 2008, yeah, after my time, I was like, okay. I was a bit upset with her at first, but I thought, okay, you are the biggest star in the world, and yeah, and he and he didn't know who to trust. He had someone in his ear. He had someone in his ear that you know, maybe Matt, you know, how do you know you can trust Matt? Yeah, you should trust me. Yeah, Matt, uh because I'm different to the other because I I don't get paid from him.
SPEAKER_01I was I didn't want the money.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Was it did he cry a lot?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I remember one time um one of the the paid uh bodyguards came to get me uh and said uh Mr. Jackson is crying in his his uh living room, his hotel suite. Can you go and see him? Because he seemed really bad. So I went to see him. I shut the door, I said, Mike, what's going on? And he goes, uh it was dark in in the hotel suite because the fans are outside. Like I was telling you, you can't you can't go near the the the silhouette basically, we got what we call it. He he can't go near the the room, he can't go out. And um I said Michael, what what's what what are you crying for? He goes, Um, I just want to be successful, Matt. I just want to be successful and invincible, they they stitched me up and uh it's but it's meant to beat thriller, and I and I said, uh I'm not sure there will never be thriller. It's digital age now, Michael, and now you're wrong. And he wouldn't accept it. And um, and why do you think you're not successful? Because you you've got thousands of fans outside waiting for you for this show, and you got the biggest biggest album of all time. And I said, Problem, you've got you your competition your competition is you, your your competition is Michael Jackson, that's just the issue. No one's even close to you. You gotta re recognize it, but he didn't say it that way. He he seemed he was like it didn't seem like he was uh never happy. No, he didn't he he measured his biggest competition was him himself, yeah. Yeah, he was so sad and crying that I just want to be successful, man. I'm thinking what else can you achieve?
SPEAKER_01Like you got the biggest ever all of these things that usually come from the parents and home, and yeah, as much as he appreciated his father, I'm sure his father wasn't the type to ever say, Well done, you did it, or that was good enough, or it always had to be better, always had to be more. And so he was always striving.
SPEAKER_00And he's always always booking the even though that he was like the biggest star of the world, he'd always read to the same books that like uh book like um the Napoleon what's he called Napoleon uh Think Think and Gre Richard.
SPEAKER_01Napoleon Hill Think Grew Rich, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you always read in that book and Tony Robbins books and Tony actually speak speakers, uh he did a uh a tape what's the uh tape coast personal group.
SPEAKER_01Personal Tony Robbins.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they were good friends. So we're so we'd throw out if there was issues and stuff, we'd reach out to Tony and Tony would would reach out and get Michael on the phone and get back on get back on track and so on. But yeah, it was sad. It's very sad.
SPEAKER_01It's really sad to be so deeply unhappy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and he's always learning. He'd always three to four books a a week, non fiction.
SPEAKER_01He'd always reach uh and who was his closest sibling? Because we said before that you know, everybody thinks he was really close to Janet, but they weren't so close. Who was his closest?
SPEAKER_00I'm not the only body god said it. I I I never s we never seen anyone.
SPEAKER_01From the siblings. No. He wasn't really close to any of them.
SPEAKER_00Not my era. Maybe in Jackson Jackson 5 and stuff, but but um there was I certainly Yeah. I mean 207 27 to 2008 I I I used to hang around with Jermaine and Tito and and and they w they were just doing whatever they can to try and and try and get back into the family with with Michael, trying to get the back in you know, trying to hope hope if they can get the doctors away and bring them back in the Jacksons and um not for money, but to to get everything to stop what's going on. You know, they they were hearing things, they they were not happy, but no, I never only his mum would bring Yeah, he was very close to his mum though. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00We never really heard nothing.
SPEAKER_01Um okay, last question about Michael. Uh so he was really kind. What's the kindest thing that you saw him do that really captured him?
SPEAKER_00Uh he would always go to uh so we we we didn't like wish it wasn't uh um we had something called Hart I don't know if you guys uh where homeless people were they where where they had a place in London and um he would want to stop there and he would say to the drivers okay stop and he would want to go on his own and he wouldn't give the money to what was a place called it was like um they used uh uh area, I think it was like Houston or somewhere like that. Homeless people, shelters. They didn't know it was Michael Jackson, so he wanted us to stay, watch him, but don't go near him. But he didn't want to give the money because he used drugs or alcohol, so he would give go go over and give them pizzas to them all and all the rest of it and stuff. And we're watching them from uh from uh action action, thinking, yeah, this guy didn't know to do this, you know, he doesn't have to do this. This guy's the most famous man in the world. But they were so drunk they had no idea that they were dealing with they would have Michael Jackson.
SPEAKER_01Imagine, imagine if they were.
SPEAKER_00They were joking with him, sat with him, he would give them time with them and sit there, and we were we were terrified watching the thing. Oh, what's gonna happen? What someone recognized him, but yeah, it was fine, it always worked out well. He was very good at being real, like looking after people and making people to uh stay relaxed and comfortable, very comfortable.
SPEAKER_01So, life after Michael, just the business kept on growing. You got remarried, you had another three children because three weren't enough. Yeah, now you've got six.
SPEAKER_00Got six children.
SPEAKER_01Congratulations.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, business went as normal. Everything I learned from him, and we we grew and uh over 2,000 locations now.
SPEAKER_01Do you have a location in Cyprus?
SPEAKER_00No, not yet, but we we're looking at doing that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um you're in all continents, where are you?
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's a lot of people now, like Cyprus the way it's situated, so it's easy to expand here than it is from the UK, especially with Europe. Luckily, my mum was born in Ireland, so I've got the BRICS you know, the Brexit issue. So otherwise it would have been a bit more difficult to live here. But uh yeah, we're going all the way. But yeah, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany and all around there. Australia, we have locations and uh yeah, we're just expanding, carrying doing what we do.
SPEAKER_01And you moved to Cyprus a year ago, I'm assuming for tax reasons. Not just as well as the weather, as well as tell us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I mean, I still I'm not gonna tell everyone the the incentives to get to Cyprus is insane when it comes to to the tax benefits, the opportunities, but mainly because the UK is not safe like it used to be. Um my son Zach, who you saw here, um he he was due to go to secondary school. And I was not happy seeing what's going on where kids are 60, 70 kids per children, you know, per class.
SPEAKER_01And how many?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's that's what we're looking at. 60. Whereas it's the immigration and what's going on now. It's like 80 million 80 million people in the little tidy island of the UK, and and there's not enough schools. There's more people now homeschooled than there are in the so in the yeah, that than there is actually in the school system. I didn't want my son to be bullied, which I believed he would. And he's been just over a year and a half end now, homeschooled. He's a year ahead, all three of them are sure a year ahead of the normal school friends that they had.
SPEAKER_01And you do it, you said you have a tutor that comes to the house, but also online, another one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's the same tutor or different same tutor. That does all three of them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, yeah, they so so it's part part. So the oldest one has secondary school, the other two are still in junior, so they have different laws.
SPEAKER_01They do it at the same time, no, because they're different ages, yeah. Different ages.
SPEAKER_00You've got like yeah, nine to eleven, one and then unless it unless it's Greek or something, and that then they they're they're on the they're at the same time, but yeah, depending on their different skills. I mean, one's twelve, one's ten, one's seven. So so they have the same teacher. It has to be a school a graduate. Cyprus is very strict on this subject.
SPEAKER_01Some schooling, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Not unlike in UK, UK you can do what you want. You just pull your kid out and off you go.
SPEAKER_01And it's so they'll be doing GCSEs, your kids?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they will. They'll be they'll be doing it very young. I mean, like Hero will be done within two years' time, 12 years old, they'll be done. And Miela, they tell me she'll be done in three years' time.
SPEAKER_01And tell us the benefits of that. So you're home, you're free to travel. Yeah, where do they make their friends? Where do they have life outside of home?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, that that's where people kind of misunderstand, I think, the social aspect is what they say. And um the what the beauty about Cyprus is, is that it's uh your network is your net your network. And I've been very lucky and privileged to have this ultimate mastermind of people around me since I was 19 years old, 18 years old. So my children will will uh spend most of their time as adults. So up until 16, they're gonna be hanging around with adults. So when my child goes, children go to business, when I go to business meetings, they come with me, they sit in on it, and so on. So they have friends, but we pick who their friends are for their kids for their um for my children. And they go to activities just the same, and with football and so on, and dancing, and we have the friends come around the house, but unlike private school, where sorry, public school where you don't know who they're mixing with, who they're coming from, their mindset, what their parents' beliefs are, and so on. This way we're we're privileged enough to be able to do that. And and with Cyprus as well, it's it's just a different world, it's an indoor life back there. We we like spending time in Christmas, Christmas over in the UK at home now, but it's very much an indoor lifestyle. But over here, they got more time, they're more energized, they're more healthy. Everything's more healthier here, the food's healthier, the crime is better. UK's not the same as it used to be, you know. And but no, we um Grant Cardone he he he um he sums up really well when people attack him with his daughters because they they got their grades low. Uh Sabrina, um, I can't remember what the other one's called, and they were attacking him. He said, Listen, um, I don't care what you guys say about homeschooling. The fact of the matter is the children will be spending most of their life from 16 onwards until however old they're gonna be, 90, 100, whatever it's gonna be, hanging around adults. I don't want the child I don't want my kids socializing with kids who are naughty and so he's done a wonderful job with uh his attitude towards it. But yeah, at first we didn't know what we were getting into. The hardest bit has been is um where the kids will get sick of us and how tough it's a