Bringing up young talent

Akon is thrilled to have worked with Michael Jackson:

"You know how you come into a career and set your goals as to where you wanna start and where you wanna end? I had a wish list of all the collaborations I ever wanted to do. Mike was at the top. I was saying, 'Well, if ever I get to Mike, then that'll be the sign I can retire.' But I got to Mike 10 years earlier than I expected. So I decided not to make retirement goals anymore.

"I think at the end of the day, it was one of those situations that caught me off guard," he added. "I didn't realize I was working so hard to actually capture his attention. That really showed me. That's the day I realized I made it."

We're sure that Jackson can see a lot of himself in Akon - after all, it's not so very far from giving kids vouchers for free sex toys to sharing Jesus Juice with young friends, and the whole dry-humping underage girls was just the same sort of 'all in everyone else's dirty minds' misunderstanding that could happen if you hang out with other people's kids in your pyjamas, huh?

We love that he calls him Mike, though. I guess there's no humiliation Jackson won't undertake in a bid to try and scrape some credibility back together. I bet Will I Am calls him MickeyJ.