I'd actually like to shake Dan Reed by the hand

I came to Michael Jackson fandom in 2019, aged 46. But what drives a middle-aged mother to become a die-hard MJ fan?

As a teen and young adult, I was (insufferably) snooty about mainstream music, shunning it in favour of retro stuff like Elvis Presley and seeking out little-known bands like the Mountain Goats and Old Crow Medicine Show. I got a twattish sense of superiority out of people's baffled faces on hearing my musical tastes, and so I dismissed MJ outright. Living near Wembley Stadium, I saw the strobe lighting of his concerts and heard the distant beat of his music when the wind blew in the right direction. Of course, I knew he was there, I just didn't (unthinkably, now) care. Of course, I knew of the allegations that dogged him (and assumed, like most people, that there was truth in them, on a no-smoke-without-fire basis). And of course, I heard the shocking news of his death, but I wasn't moved emotionally. I could barely have named five of his songs.

Fast-forward to 2019, and I'm showing my six-year-old son a range of music genres. "Look, this is David Bowie. Look, this is Bob Marley. Look, this is Madonna. And look, this is Michael Jackson." I'd randomly selected Smooth Criminal, performed in Munich on the HIStory tour. My little boy immediately leaned forward in his seat, mesmerised, and began pestering me to watch more MJ, more MJ, more MJ. Only one problem: Leaving Neverland had just come out and I wasn't sure I wanted my child dancing to the music of a pedophile. Because he had to be one, right? Right?!

And so I watched Leaving Neverland, both parts, expecting it to settle the question once and for all. But as sickened as I was by the abuse described, something was... off. It's hard to remember what exactly sowed the first seeds of doubt. Having worked at the BBC, I was familiar with the basic conventions of documentary filmmaking – set out assertions, and then examine them against corroborating and contradictory evidence, with the audience given the tools to evaluate claims – but this approach was absent. The men just delivered their allegations to camera, with no corroboration beyond the fact that they were indeed in MJ's sphere. There was also a jarring incongruence between the trauma the men described and their body language/facial expressions. Whatever it was, I decided to do a little digging.

I promptly disappeared down the MJ rabbit hole for six months. I started with Razorfist's rebuttal video series on YouTube, the documentary Lies of Leaving Neverland, MJ's own rebuttal of Martin Bashir's hit piece and then into sections of court documents for whichever point I was looking into, countless clips of MJ and a slew of books about him. Along the way I saw the clip of MJ's Live from Neverland broadcast, which made me cry ugly sobs. Here, at last, was clear emotional congruence – fear, disbelief, grief – in stark contrast to Safechuck and Robson's hollow approximations.

As the full picture of the nightmarish horrors MJ was subjected to emerged, I remember finding it almost unbearable that he might have endured it all as a completely innocent man. And so, I actively looked for evidence of guilt – something solid that would justify what he went through and make me feel better. But what I encountered instead were more and more contradictions, implausible timelines and claims that conflicted directly with established records.

Juxtaposed with the complete lack of evidence against him, to this day, I surveyed the towering mountain of evidence that his accusers lied for financial gain. It's absurd that such baseless allegations ever reached court, so logistically impossible are they without rewriting the laws of time and space. I realised that large sections of the press happily repeated claims as fact but completely ignored the legal rebuttals that led the courts to reject them outright. I understood that truth and accuracy just don't matter when it comes to Michael Jackson ("What happened to truth? Did it go out of style?").

Without Leaving Neverland, ironically, I would still believe that MJ was a pedophile. Without Leaving Neverland, I would never have dived into his back catalogue and experienced the countless hours of joy it's given me – and will continue to give me for the rest of my life. Without Leaving Neverland, I would never have grasped the true nature of the media, which has taught me to look closely and think for myself, rather than assume something's true just because it's writ large. Most importantly, without Leaving Neverland, I would never have come to love the man behind the media lies and cruel caricatures, or absorbed the loving, giving message of his legacy. And so, despite the damage done by Dan Reed's film, I find myself strangely grateful for it. I'd probably even shake him by the hand.

So intense has my journey towards MJ fandom been, that it's no exaggeration to divide my life into pre-MJ and post-MJ. Is my now 12-year-old son still a Michael Jackson fan? No, he's moved on. But his mama hasn't, and never will.