'He'll come back to visit, but not to stay, not to live,' Joseph Jackson said, adding that his son has received multiple threats in the wake of the trial, despite being acquitted. 'I know if I was him, I wouldn't come back.'

Though he has gone, he has not been forgotten. As Jackson continues his post-trial rest and recuperation as a guest of Bahrain's crown prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Khalifa, America's fascination with its absent son remains high.

Intrigue over his plans for the future are among the various inquiries his spokeswoman, Raymone Bain, has been left fielding as her master lolls in Bahrain. No, he is not selling Neverland, she says, nor has he purchased a US$1.5 million beach home on Bahrain's Amwaj Islands as reported, and contrary to media claims he is not busy recording a song with his three children.

And the time he strode into the ladies' lavatories at a public shopping mall in Dubai last month was purely an accident owing to his inability to read the Arabic sign on the door, she insists.

'Upon realising his mistake, he quickly exited,' Ms Bain revealed, countering claims in Dubai newspapers that Jackson, who was reportedly dressed in Arab headgear at the time, actually lingered to powder his nose in front of a mirror before beating a retreat.

If Court TV reporter Diane Dimond's new book on Jackson is to be believed, it may have been a false nose he was powdering. Entitled Be Careful Who You Love - a line taken from Jackson's 1982 song Billie Jean - the book cites various outlandish claims including testimony from one of the singer's former housemaids, who recounts how her eccentric employer kept racks of false teeth and prosthetic noses in his wardrobe.

She is not the only former employee coming back to haunt him. Far more serious for Jackson - and for his rock-bottom bank account - is the US$64 million lawsuit launched against him by his one-time adviser Dieter Wiesner. Filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, the civil suit accuses Jackson of fraud and breach of contract, stemming from a tangled business deal that went sour.

Mr Wiesner asserts that Jackson begged him to become his personal manager in 2002, when his personal finances were in crisis, only to 'rudely and abruptly' fire him the following year. The star still owes him millions, he claims.

'True to form, Jackson never paid Wiesner for the countless hours he spent rescuing Jackson from the brink of financial disaster,' the court papers state.

The lawsuit has brought double trouble for Jackson since it is backed by tapes containing recordings of messages that Jackson left on the answer phone of another ex-aide, Mark Schaffel, a gay-porn producer, who is also suing him over a failed business deal.

On one recording, Jackson, 47, descends into a bizarre rant against Jews, dubbing them 'leeches' who he says conspired to leave him penniless. 'They suck ... it's a conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose,' he added.

The tapes' publication has unleashed a new flurry of 'Wacko Jacko' headlines in the US and stirred fresh controversy for the fallen star, just as he had been hoping for things to settle down.

The Anti-Defamation League, which won an apology from Jackson in 1995 after he used anti-Jewish epithets in a song, They Don't Care About Us, has expressed outrage over his remarks.

'It is clear now that he never was able to completely remove the bigotry from his heart,' said the league's national director, Abraham Foxman.

'It seems every time he has a problem in his life, he blames it on Jews ... It is important now for Mr Jackson to stand up and acknowledge that his words are hurtful and hateful. Michael Jackson has an anti-Semitic streak, and hasn't learned from his past mistakes.'