Michael Jackson statue unveiled in London to near-total ridicule

Mohammed al Fayed, the billionaire Egyptian owner of Fulham football club, who commissioned £100,000 statue outside club's ground, says people who don't like it 'can go to Chelsea'.

The statue of Michael Jackson outside Fulham's football ground at Craven Cottage in London.

London has a new statue. Unfortunately, its unveiling has been greeted by almost universal ridicule.

If the subject matter - Michael Jackson - were not controversial enough, its location outside the ground of the English Premier League football side Fulham has proved downright perplexing to most.

Plus there is the fact that art critics consider the 2.3 metre-tall statue to be something less than a Rodin, prompting The Guardian newspaper yesterday to launch an online poll on whether readers considered it "Britain's ugliest statue" (almost 70 per cent reckoned it was).

But Mohammed al Fayed, the billionaire Egyptian owner of Fulham who commissioned the £100,000 statue in the wake of the singer's death, remains defiant in the face of the onslaught.

"Why is it bizarre?," he asked after the unveiling. "Football fans love it. If some stupid fans don't understand and appreciate such a gift, they can go to hell.

"I don't want them to be fans. If they don't understand and don't believe in things I believe in they can go to Chelsea, they can go to anywhere else.

"People will queue to come and visit it from all over the UK and it is something that I and everybody else should be proud of."

Mr al Fayed, 78, considered Jacko to be a friend and, indeed, in 1999, the singer even attended a match at the Craven Cottage ground. He was given a club scarf, which he said he liked and promptly gave to someone else.

Originally, Mr al Fayed had planned to erect the statue at his Harrods store but, having sold the business for £2.2 billion last year, he opted to site it at the football stadium on the banks of the Thames.

The Manchester United and England centre-back Rio Ferdinand wrote on his Twitter site: "Did Michael Jackson even like football? What is a statue of the great man doing outside of the Fulham FC's stadium? Al Fayed said he and Jacko were great friends … well, put the statue up at your house, man!"

The columnist Craig Brown wrote in the Daily Mail: "When the veil was finally pulled away to reveal the androgynous, girly-voiced Jackson, surely the least footbally person who ever lived, [the fans'] faces must have been a Munch-like picture of desolation and despair.

"Having suffered years of ribbing for their nickname ‘The Cottagers’, Fulham fans now found themselves faced with a fresh source of humiliation."

Louisa Buck, contemporary art correspondent for The Art newspaper, told the BBC: "It's a spectacularly bad piece of kitsch that doesn't even look all that much like Michael Jackson.

"It's quite flattering actually. It makes him look less weird facially than he was at the end of his life."

Fisun Guner, art critic for the Arts Desk website, added: "It's basically a blown-up, vaguely look-a-like doll. I'm sure you'll be able to get a version of one in Toys R Us very soon.

"I have a strong feeling that Michael would have simply loved it. I imagine he might have had at least five copies made and had them dotted around Neverland, amongst all the junk Versailles furniture he was so keen to buy in bulk.

"So it's perhaps a fitting tribute after all - though I'm glad I don't have to look at it more than once."

It is worth recording, perhaps, that as long ago as July, 1882, the New York Times wrote: "It is a generally received opinion," it began, "that most of the statues of London are contemptible and vile."

Things could just have got a bit worse.