Chaos descended on a travelling carnival yesterday when, during a stopover in Sacramento, Michael Jackson’s grieving mother, Katherine, stormed onto the stage of one of the sideshows and attempted to abduct a performing chimp, claiming that it’s skull was the repository of her son’s stolen brain. “There were security guards and carnies trying to drag he chimp away from her, but she just wouldn’t let go,” says twenty-six year old Pete Fartos, who claims to have witnessed the whole bizarre event. “All the time she was screaming that they’d saved Michael’s brain and put in a monkey! She damn near managed to get away, but the police arrived just as she was bundling the chimp into her limousine!” Mrs Jackson’s actions were reportedly sparked by the sight of the ape engaging in her son’s trademark moonwalk, whilst it mimed to a medley of his greatest hits. “The moonwalk seemed to be the final straw,” says Fartos. “She’d already been visibly shaken when the chimp had screeched ‘Owwwww’ in a high-pitched falsetto as it fondled its penis. I guess the fact that they had it dressed in a wig, sunglasses and white glove didn’t help, either.” Mrs Jackson, who is believed to have been alerted to the chimp’s amazing resemblance to her deceased son after seeing a video of it posted by fans on YouTube, has been desperately seeking Michael’s missing grey matter since it emerged that his brain had been removed from his body during the autopsy, and had not been returned to the singer’s skull for his memorial service. “She’s vowed not to rest until it‘s found,” top celebrity blogger Ronnie Quim told the press following the alleged incident, “and she won’t allow the burial to proceed until her son is reunited with his brain.” The carnival’s owner, seventy-two year old Harry Clebwitt, has been quick to point out that the chimp had been a popular attraction at the travelling show for several years, and that it also did impersonations of Elton John and Aretha Franklin. Furthermore as far as he was aware, the primate still had its original brain. Experts have also expressed scepticism as to whether it was even practical for an adult human being’s brain to be transplanted into a chimp. “The skull is far too small to accommodate a man’s brain,” opined leading anthropologist Professor Dick String. “Now, if it had been a prescription pain-killer popping paedophile gorilla that Mrs Jackson had tried to abduct, that would have been far more credible.”

Although the LA County Coroner’s Department has always maintained that Jackson’s brain was removed for further toxicology tests and is currently in a lab in West Hollywood, they have refused to produce the organ for press photographs, raising suspicions that it has, indeed, been stolen. “I know they say they won’t put it on public display so as not to upset his family, but that’s just a load of bull,” declares Freddie Fister, showbiz editor of the Weekly World Shopper. “Money talks in this town and the fact is that no matter how much we offer, and who we offer it to, nobody seems to be able to lay their hands on that brain for us.” Consequently, there has been much wild speculation as to the organ’s whereabouts. One popular theory is that it has been abducted by infamous celebrity stalker and brilliant surgeon Dr Julius Nobclutch, who became notorious for stealing Cyd Charisse’s legs from a Bel Air mortuary last year. Dismissed by many as an urban myth – invented by morticians involved in selling celebrity body parts as memorabilia – Nobclutch is widely rumoured to be obsessed with creating the ‘perfect celebrity’ from purloined body parts. “Even as we speak, he’s in his secret basement lab, keeping Jacko’s brain alive in a glass tank full of bubbling nutrients, whilst planning to transplant it – with the aid of his hunchbacked assistant – into a new body,” opines Freddie Fister, adding that the assistant has to be hunchbacked in order to meet Federal quotas for employing the disabled. “Just imagine, if he can marry the legs of one of Hollywood’s greatest dancers with the torso of Mickey Hargitay, Heath Ledger’s face and the brain of the Twentieth Century’s greatest entertainers, the results will be incredible! Agents will be falling over themselves to sign up such and all-singing, all-dancing sensation!” However, others believe that Jackson may have been complicit in the kidnapping of his brain, faking his own death for the purpose of effecting a sinister transplant. “His scheme is to swap his brain into the body of a nine year old child,” Ronnie Quim claims. “Not only could the ‘Peter Pan of Pop’ stay young forever and never grow up by continually swapping bodies, but what better disguise could there be for him to stalk children? Nobody would ever suspect – he could infiltrate playgrounds and school yards undetected!”

In the media frenzy surrounding the King of Pop’s demise, rumours abound that it isn’t just his brain which has gone AWOL. “Apparently, the day after he died, repo men turned up at the morgue to repossess his face,” squeals internet muckraker Hernandez Savoy, who claims to have impeccable sources for his eponymous celebrity gossip blog. “According to his maid’s sister’s hairdresser he was way behind on the payments for his plastic surgery and it was the only thing of value he still had! She says they’re planning to sell it on e-bay!” Whilst the Jackson family has dismissed all such stories as baseless speculation, and has flatly denied that his mother attempted to abduct an ape, or had even attended any carnivals in Sacramento or anywhere else, the chimp connection refuses to go away. “Stop press! I’ve just heard that when they carried out the autopsy the pathologists were amazed to find that the body wasn’t even human – it was a chimp,” Savoy’s latest blog post claims. “It’s all true – this guy who drives a wagon for the morgue that I gave a hand job to told me – he even has some photo-shopped pictures of what it might have looked like!” Savoy believes that Jackson may have switched places with the chimp as long ago as 2004, in an attempt to escape the bad publicity surrounding the court case in which he was acquitted of child molestation. “It would explain a lot of his weird behaviour in recent years – picking his ass in public, crapping all over the furniture and stuff,” muses Savoy – who has set gay stereotypes back at least twenty years – on his blog. “It would also explain why his doctor’s only medical qualifications are in veterinary science!” He claims that, even now, the police are searching zoos and homes for retired chimps all over California for primates wearing surgical masks, sunglasses and spangly jackets. “They should just leave him be –he’s obviously happy playing on a tyre hanging from a tree somewhere,” the blogger says. “Besides, as long as he’s officially dead we can go on printing any weird story we like about him without fear of being sued for libel!”