Michael Jackson’s tour promoter says he insisted on having a 24/7 doctor like Obama

Michael Jackson was insistent about taking his personal doctor with him on his doomed London tour despite being advised against it, says promoter Randy Phillips.

Phillips, who is chief executive of AEG Live, the company behind the 50-concert series, was with Jackson when he was in a state of cardiac arrest.

He told Britain’s Sky News that he advised the singer against bringing Conrad Murray, a trained cardiologist, due to the cost. “Michael told me, ‘You don’t understand. My body is the machine that fuels this business and I need personal care and I want a doctor 24/7 like President Obama would have, and this is my doctor’.”

Phillips said Jackson told him Murray had been his doctor for three years. He said Jackson insisted on having him on staff throughout the rehearsals and the run of upcoming UK shows.

Phillips said he was outside the hospital room while Jackson was being worked on for an hour-and-a-half – and that it seemed an eternity.

“I was sitting in a chair right outside the … operating room, and there was tons of activity, and they were trying to resuscitate him and save him and working really hard, the doctors, nurses, everybody … I sat there … it seemed, honestly, it seemed like an eternity. But it took about an hour, an hour-and a-half before the nurse came out and told [manager] Frank [DiLeo] and I that there was no hope.”

He said it was Murray who broke the devastating news of Jackson’s death to the megastar’s three children.

“I stood at the doorway when they went in and they told them and just the look of fear in their faces … it was hard,” Phillips said. “I’ll think about that the rest of my life. But they seem to be doing really well now.”