Gordon in the morning: Hail Jackson

So, yes, that carefully phrased wording of Jackson's swansong?. Gordon reveals the words "in London" did mean these are simply the last dates in London:

After testing the water in London at the O2 and being astonished by the unprecedented response, promoters will take his swan song around the world.

New York, Las Vegas, Mumbai and Paris are all likely venues, with Jacko ready to dominate the pop calendar for the next three years.

The thought of Jackson "dominating the pop calendar" for three long years really does suck the joy out of the future, doesn't it?

But in what way is the response unprecedented? Concerts selling out isn't unprecedented, is it? Man announces gigs. People buy tickets.

Gordon, can you find someone to stress just how unprecedented this is?

After the mad ticket rush yesterday, AEG Live promoter Randy Phillips said: “That wasn’t anticipated.

“We never thought it would be 50 shows and, frankly, based on the queues on Ticketmaster, plus the 300,000 registrants we still haven’t issued codes to, we could spend two years here."

It wasn't anticipated? So you went ahead and booked for fifty nights expecting nobody would turn up and were surprised that people arrived waving cheques and postal orders?

And the protestations of "we never thought it would be fifty shows" would be a little more believable if all the pre-launch stories in the papers hadn't, erm, predicted fifty shows.

Still, don't expect anything in the way of critical thinking from Gordon. Oh, no, you can already sense the Sun gearing up to appoint itself the official Jackson paper during the gigs:

I expected Jackomania, but this is off the scale.

Did you see the King Of Pop on tour in the 1980s or 1990s? Email me on biz@the-sun.co.uk and we might contact you for a bit of Jacko reminiscing.

Did you read the Sun's coverage of Michael Jackson's trials in the early 2000s or the child-dangling incident? Keep quiet about it, don't spoil it for them.

Gordo also offers his readers a surprising opportunity of a lifetime:

Click here to enter your vote and help decide the set list for Michael Jackson's forthcoming concerts.

Wow - despite the Mirror having the finalised set list earlier in the week?

To be fair to Gordon, nowhere does he say that the massive form you can fill in to select song titles from a randomly-truncated list of Jackson's back catalogue will actually have any bearing on the songs played at the gigs, just that you're picking the songs "you'd like to hear".

There is no way you can simply write in demands for him to cover Billy Idol songs, either, which is surely missing a trick.

Elsewhere, Gordon reports on Ricky Wilson's evening:

THE KAISER CHIEFS are not known for riotous laddish antics and I certainly wouldn’t have predicted this.

On Wednesday I’m told some of the Leeds lads were spotted on a boys’ night out at a seedy London strip club where punters splash out £20 per dance on strippers.

Paying money to see women take their clothes off. That is seedy, isn't it, Gordon? Especially since the link to Page Three on your pages gives breasts for free.