Like at the time of the sudden death of the People's Princess, I have felt alienated, even hostile, to the mourning of the death of the King of Pop. But maybe not for the same reasons.

The day Diana died in 1997, I was in the Isle of Wight for my aunt's funeral. I had been very close to my aunt, especially for a few well-remembered months of my childhood when she brought me up. The flags at half-mast, the flowers, the emotional crowds ... it all felt so secondhand, vicarious, superficial, false... compared to my own, private grief at my aunt's death.

So part of my resistance to Jackomania has been memories of the Diana Moment - which a lot of people felt embarrassed about some time afterwards.

Also, he wasn't Prince! He was about as "alternative" as Pepsi! And he hung his child out of the Berlin Hotel window! And none of them may have been his children! The Allegations! The Bleaching! The blah, the blah.

Yes, yes. But, for me - slightly uncomfortably - there is more to my resistance to the hysteria than that.

Basically, he was not John Lennon.

Nothing should ever surpass the grief I felt the days after John Lennon was murdered. (Certainly not the death of Elvis a few years earlier, which I barely noticed.)

Lennon was great. His best songs have a brazen honesty which....

Okay. (I've turned on my hyperbole limiter) But, more importantly, Lennon was my generation.

So, I come to the annoying truth - Michael Jackson was after my time.

Lets not exaggerate. I thrilled a bit to Thriller. FGS, I made a pop video of Bad which got discussed in Media Studies seminars. And, btw, Lennon seldom features on my present playlist; at the moment I'm listening to Massive Attack - no longer cutting edge maybe, but hardly antique.

But Pop... I no longer listen to, identify with Pop.

So, a have a frisson of a feeling that I'm old, that I am losing touch.