‘Mr Hough - a professional on Dancing With The Stars, the U.S. version of Strictly Come Dancing, stayed with Mrs Cole until 4am when he left with his dog.’Up until then, I was bored by the whole story, but now....!!
The much revered Michael Jackson, who died after suffering a cardiac arrest in June, had a cocktail of drugs in his body which included Midazolam, Diazepam, Lidocaine, Lorazepam and Ephredrine.
The Los Angeles coroner has now announced the official cause of death as 'homicide due to intoxication by anaesthetic' with the primary drugs responsible being Propofol which is the powerful anaesthetic and Lorazepam, a sedative.
His personal physician, Conrad Murray has strenuously denied any wrongdoing and said that MJ had been given the drugs as part of his treatment for insomnia.
It certainly seems to have worked!!
The King is dead - well the much celebrated 'King of Pop' anyway!
In the unlikely event you have been hidden away in a cave and not heard the news, singer, dancer and musician, Michael Jackson, passed away during Thursday evening (UK time) from what is said to have been a heart attack.
The media, of course, are questioning if this was brought on by the excessive use of painkillers and whether one such drug was administered by his 'personal physician' a short while before his death.
Whatever the outcome, MJ ended his life as he had lived through most of it - in chaos.
He is a spectacular advert for not pushing your children into the world of showbusiness at an early age. His life seemed to be, at best, unrelated to reality, and at worst seedy and questionable. Both his unhealthy fascination with young people and his obsession with changing his appearance through the use of the surgeon's knife clearly demonstrated a mind that was not at ease within it's own framework.
Commentators are saying we will all remember where we were when MJ died. Personally, I will not.
He was unquestionably a great entertainer and had a knack of grabbing the headlines whenever he wanted. That is as far as it goes for me - but then I do not share the fascination for celebrity misfits that many people do.
It could be argued he was seen as a role model by many of his fans but surely a lifestyle like his is not something to be envied or aspire to?
It seems that Jackson has departed this earth as he lived his life - in a huge mess that others are going to spend years cleaning up.
R.I.P. MJ!
The conclusion of the much anticipated Pirate Bay trial in Sweden yesterday, saw the owners of the company jailed for a year and penalised further, by having to pay a massive amount in compensation to record companies.
The whole question of having the right to exchange information on the internet has heated up again.
The Pirate Bay is a website where users can freely link up and exchange music - and other files - without paying for it. Unfortunately, the big record companies see this as being a breach of copyright and an avoidance of their high charging for recorded music. In short, they say it is illegal and decided to pursue their case against the directors of The Pirate Bay. It was effectively a test case and it is questionable why it was decided to try it in Sweden, when it is clearly a universal problem.
The Swedish courts found in favour of the record companies, but its decision has raised numerous questions about its legitimacy.
The Pirate Bay was only the site through which its users exchanged music; it was a conduit that enabled them to do so and it did not actively - openly at least - encourage it. The court, effectively penalised it for being in existence and nothing more. The site's owners did not gain financially from the actual file sharing between users but from the fees paid by advertisers on their site. It did not store the files but acted as a gateway between user's computers.
However, it was judged to have profited from copyright violations and was therefore found guilty.
Of course, if record companies did not overcharge for their product then there would not be such an incentive to 'pirate' downloads in the first place. The cost of an average CD has often been criticised but has ever been fully justified.
There is also the argument that often a consumer will download a track by a new artist, when they would not be prepared to pay out for the whole CD without trying it first. Subsequently, though, they will often buy the CD.
On a discussion board, one contributor summed it up something like this:
"Cut off the heads of four and another eight will grow in their place"
I am thinking that the record companies have only won a minor victory and their 'problem' will not disappear just yet!!
