Lost in Showbiz is shocked to learn of the latest twist in the ongoing saga of the late Michael Jackson. Alain Branchereau, professor of vascular surgery at Timone University Hospital, Marseilles, has claimed in a book called Michael Jackson: The Secret of a Voice that the singer was chemically castrated at the age of 12 using the synthetic anti-male hormone drug cyproterone.

His watertight evidence for this claim rests on the fact that Jackson suffered from acne as a child and that cyproterone could have been used as what sounds like the most drastic cure for acne short of actually chopping your head off. "The drug blocks puberty, the voice can't mature," offers Branchereau, adding: "Michael Jackson never stopped singing."

Some may feel that this story comes under the category of medical journalism technically known as Saying The Most Demented Things You Can Think Of About Someone Because They're Dead And Therefore No Longer Subject To Libel Laws. Lost in Showbiz urges those people to consider an equally demented theory – the sheer desperation of the pushy music business family facing the prospect of a future in which their once angelic-voiced cash cow honks like a despondent goose – and think again. Put it this way, if Lost In Showbiz was Justin Bieber – recently subject to a distinctly adolescent tremor in the voice – it would be regarding that forthcoming visit to the dermatologist with a very worried eye.