It's not often that Lost in Showbiz asks you, the reader, to dig deep into your pockets and support a charitable cause, but this week it felt impelled to do so. Its philanthropic bent was pricked by news of a situation that no one else seemed to be addressing: the plight of Jermaine Jackson, a man Lost in Showbiz has had a vast amount of respect for ever since he claimed that if he slept without a light on, he was visited by "people from 1800". He was apparently trapped in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. According to reports, his passport expired while he was visiting the West African country and, under Californian law, he couldn't be issued with a new one until he paid outstanding child support amounting to almost £62,000 to his former wife Alejandra, for their two fairly astonishingly named children Jaafar Jeremiah Jackson and Jermajesty Jermaine Jackson.
The tension in this dire situation was ratcheted up further by events back at what the media persist in referring to as The Jackson Family Compound in Encino, California, where Alejandra and children – two by Jermaine and two by his brother Randy, oh do keep up – appears to be engaged in some kind of Transatlantic Celebrity Squatting Challenge with Alex "The Reidinator" Reid, refusing to budge despite a court order demanding she leave so that building work can take place. Earlier this week, The Reidinator appeared to have edged ahead in the dignity stakes by complaining that his wife was telling people he was "living in a cupboard", but that was before Alejandra threatened to make her own reality TV series, which as far as Lost in Showbiz can gather, will, by necessity, essentially consist of footage of her sitting in the garage singing We Shall Not Be Moved.
Lost in Showbiz was all ready to dismiss suggestions that if that was waiting for you back home, you too might strongly consider the benefits of "losing" your passport in Burkina Faso, when it learned that Jermaine had been spotted, apparently not in Africa any more, but in Cannes: perhaps those suggestions had a point after all. Cancelling the telethon, Lost in Showbiz still fears the situation at The Jackson Family Compound could escalate into a terrifying David Koresh-style siege situation. It looks on aghast at the prospect of Waco Jacko and wonders what it can do to help.
Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/feb/24/are-jermaine-jacksons-travel-travails-over
