MICHAEL WANTED TO BE CLONED, SO HE COULD LIVE FOREVER

Michael Jackson was so terrified of dying he was desperate to clone himself in a bizarre bid to extend his superstar legacy.

Jackson – who was obsessed with the idea of immortality – attended a Las Vegas conference on human cloning with his friend, the spoon bender Uri Geller.

And the King of Pop was so blown away by the teachings of a sect called the Raelians he asked if they would clone him.

Jacko’s chauffeur Al Bowman, who drove the singer and Geller to the event in 2002, said: “Jackson was very excited.

“He bounced out of that conference like a small child. He was smiling and on a high. I heard him and Uri talking in the back of the limo.

“He was talking about the prospect of being cloned. He grabbed Uri by both arms and told him, ‘I really want to do it Uri, and I don’t care how much it costs’.”

The Raelian movement is a strange religious sect that believes the human soul dies when the body dies so the key to eternal life is cloning – recreating individuals from their own genetic make-up.

The sect also has a scientific arm called Clonaid which holds regular fund-raising events to share its latest research with the great and good of Hollywood.

“I always remember Jackson talking about the cloning of Dolly the sheep in Britain in 1996 – he was totally fascinated by it,” said Al, 50, Jacko’s chauffeur for over a decade.

“Then when he heard about the Raelians he became utterly convinced this weird religious group could clone humans.

“It was really oddball stuff, but it interested Michael. One day in the limo he said, ‘They did it with Dolly’. I said, ‘Dali… you mean Salvador Dali’. We both laughed.

“Michael said he wanted a mini-version of himself cloned to carry on his legacy. He was hoping that Michael Jackson could live for ever.”

In the 90s Jackson inquired about being cryogenically frozen before he died and it was also rumoured that he took GH3, a drug designed to prolong life expectancy.

But he was particularly fascinated by the Raelians, which were founded by French journalist Claude Vorilhon.

In December 1973, Vorilhon – or Rael as he is now known – claimed he was contacted by an extra-terrestrial being who emerged from a flying saucer and told him – in fluent French – that humans were created in laboratories 25,000 years ago by people from another planet .