O.o ...okay... This really is utterly random, and more or less dates back 18 years. So my current Pulp music phase has resulted in me purchasing the ridiculous Harry Potter soundtrack for the songs Jarvis Cocker wrote, and plugging a few of the singles gaps I had in my collection (why do so many B-sides never appear on albums until 10 years later as extras??).
...And listening to a few interviews/radio shows the man had contributed to in the past (BBC6 on sundays damn how did I not know that was a thing???) anyway - noticed that the infamous "Michael Jackson Brit Awards" incident kept cropping up - so of course googlage occurred...
1) As always with these things the tabloids took it and blew it out of all proportion
2) MJs legal team reckoned an assult had happened
3) Bizarrely comedian Bob Mortimer turns out to be a lawyer, and helped stop the erroneous charges from coming to anything
4) Another coincidental thing; David Bowie was getting a lifetime acheivement award that night, so had his own film crew there so he could have something for his Archive. They filmed the whole thing and proved that nothing happened!
5) Really really weird this last one many MJ fans are still really really pissed off about this... Even though I personally thought the whole filmed incident is hilarious (maybe it's a British humour thing? Dunno) and MJ proved he's a professional performer not letting it get in the way of the act at all
And according to Jarvis Cocker himself - he reckoned the performance was a bit over the top/narcissitic at the time, and in a typically British (and dare I say Northern? Despite growing up in the South I've actually lived up North too, heh in Sheffield actually ) fashion was bitterly complaining about it to his bandmate, the keyboard player Candida. She called his bluff and told him to go and do something about it. Red flag to bull, he gets up starts wandering towards the stage - not actually expecting to make it there, and half expecting that he'll be able to go back and say "I tried!" Next thing he knows he's on the stage with no idea what to do since he hadn't actually planned that far ahead...
Eh here's video footage of the "incident" for the curious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgG-XJgmXdU
And the resulting fury/press conference O.o :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK0Ynq9Kl1k
And an example of the non-tabloid British reactions (ironically the guy hosting this show actually hosted the awards ceremony itself too):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9UrQOYOnWo