There might have been 20 years between them, but Macaulay maintains there was nothing sinister about his friendship with the late King of Pop

Michael Jackson made no secret of his predilection for opening his bedroom to children, admitting he loved enjoying hot milk and cookies in a bed packed full of young boys.

“‘I have slept in a bed with many children. It’s very charming, it’s very sweet, it’s what the whole world should do,” he controversially claimed in the now infamous 2003 Martin Bashir documentary, Living With Michael Jackson.

His risky behaviour landed him in legal hot water twice. First in 1993, when he was accused of molesting dentist’s son Jordy Chandler, 13, whose family reportedly received an £18.5million in an out-of-court settlement.

The again in 2005 when teenager Gavin Arvizo claimed to have been abused when he stayed at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara, California, whilst battling cancer as a 10 year old.

Michael and Macaulay became friends when he was just 10 (Image: SIM)

Michael reached out after the success of 1990 film Home Alone (Image: Publicity Picture)

Michael was eventually cleared of all charges, but the trial threw up another famous name, with a former maid claiming to have seen Michael abusing Macaulay Culkin.

“I saw Mr Jackson and Macaulay by the library,” Adrian McManus told the trial in Santa Barbara, California.

“Mr Jackson was kissing him on his cheek, and he had his hand kind of on his leg, kind of on his rear end,” she claimed.

Macaulay, then 24, was quick to defend the full-grown man he described as his ‘best friend’.

Yes, they’d shared a bed, he told the court. Yes, he knew about Michael’s porn stash, and no, Michael had never touched him.

Macaulay was a regular at his much older friend’s Neverland ranch (Image: EMT)

The sprawling estate had everything a kid could dream of
“It was amazing to me that nobody even approached me and asked if these allegations were true,” he said.

On the subject of the adult images, he continued, “I don’t find it inappropriate. It’s just something that human beings possess. When I was 12 or 13 years old I had a couple of Playboys under my bed.”

And as for the possibility that he could have been abused in his sleep, Macaulay was clear.

“I find that unlikely. I think I’d realise that something like that was happening to me,” he said.

Macaulay vehemently denied Michael ever behaved inappropriately (Image: Ernie Mccreight/REX/Shutterstock)
So what was the truth about the unlikely friendship between the child actor and the King of Pop?

Macaulay first met Michael when he was performing in The Nutcracker in New York as a child.

“He came backstage before the show. He loved dance, he was a dance man… I remember he looked at me like, ‘I know you from somewhere. Oh, ‘Uncle Buck,’ yeah you’re funny,'” Macaulay previously recalled.

Then when Home Alone came out in 1990, Macaulay, then 10, received a call from Michael ‘out of the blue’. He told him he understood the pressures of child stardom and offered to be his friend.

Michael and brother Jermaine Jackson leave the courtroom during his 2005 child molestation trial (Image: Reuters)

Michael and Jordy Chandler (Image: REX)
Over the next four years the child actor and his siblings became regulars at Neverland – which was stocked with sweets and fairground rides – and regularly shared Jackson’s bed.

“When Macaulay Culkin was little, [his brother] Kieran Culkin would sleep on this side, Macaulay Culkin was on this side his sisters in there,” Michael told Bashir.

“We all would just jam in the bed, you know, we would wake up like dawn and go in the hot-air balloon.”

They quickly became inseparable, with Macaulay starring in Michael’s 1991 video for Black and White, and being named his daughter Paris Jackson’s godfather when she was born in 1998.

Macaulay remained friends with Michael until his death (Image: Splash News)
“Seriously, he was like my best friend for a good long stretch,” Macaulay previously told a Marc Maron podcast, adding, “It was a legitimate friendship.”

“I never felt uncomfortable, that was the way that he was, down to his bone marrow,” he continued.

“It never felt weird. It was just the way that it was. I looked at him for who he was. At that point, I was pretty famous and I met plenty of famous people, his fame did not make a thing. I was not enamored by him.”

Like Michael – who was abused by his father Joe – Macaulay had also suffered a turbulent childhood and became legally emancipated from his parents at 14 after they tried to get control of his $17m fortune.

Macaulay with his family
Also like Jackson 5 star Michael, he had found fame suddenly at an age where he was too young to make sense of it.

“He reached out to me because a lot of things were happening, big and fast with me, and I think he identified with that,” the actor told Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside Of You podcast.

“At the end of the day, it’s almost easy to say it was weird or whatever but it wasn’t because it made sense. At the end of the day, we were friends.

Pictured getting matching tattoos with goddaughter Paris Jackson (Image: Instagram)
“He was the kind of person who’d been through the exact same frickin’ thing and wanted to make sure I wasn’t alone.”

The pair remained friends until Michael’s death in June 2009 from a lethal overdose of prescription drugs.

And Macaulay – who attended his funeral – once let slip his frustration at Michael for leaving himself vulnerable to the abuse allegations that derailed his career.

“It was a big, fat mess. I almost wanted to say to him, ‘You should have known better, just to even have those kind of people in your life,'” he told New York magazine.

Martin Bashir’s infamous documentary saw Michael admit to having sleepovers with young boys
And he also reflected on how close him himself came to living a similarly introverted and eccentric life.

“One of the things that I always thought is that I could have turned out that way.

I’m a fairly sheltered person, but I could have just put up a fortress around myself, bought a big chunk of land somewhere, and said, ‘F**k all y’all!’” he continued.

“But I made a decision when I was 14 that I was going to live life, where I think he made the opposite decision. It’s a cool little world that he has, but at the same time, it’s become a little more distant from reality.”

Almost three decades on, Macaulay he remains as loyal to his ‘hilarious, charming’ friend as ever.

“He was f**king funny, silly. For me, it’s so normal and mundane,” he said.

“I know it’s a big deal to everyone else, but to me it was a normal friendship.”