EP 21: They Dressed Me Up as Michael Jackson and Sent Me Out the Front — Matt Fiddes on Ten Years Inside the World's Biggest Brand

Matt Fiddes was in infant school in Swindon when his teacher put on "Bad" for the warm-up, and again that summer when the holiday club screened Moonwalker after lunch. He had no way of knowing he'd spend a decade of his adult life standing a few feet from the man who made both. Matt is an entrepreneur first — he runs the largest martial arts franchise in the world, has won more awards than he can comfortably list, and was recently named Global Franchisor of the Year (he and Paul will both be in New York in December to collect). But he's also one of the few people alive who saw Michael Jackson's daily life up close and stayed close to the end. With the biopic having crossed a billion dollars at the box office, a sequel commissioned covering the years Matt was actually there, and Michael simultaneously holding the number one book, the number one album and six singles in the worldwide charts seventeen years after his death, the demand for Matt's account has gone through the roof. This is part one of two. There was too much to fit. The stories in here are extraordinary. The day Michael woke Matt up wanting to go to a bookshop in London and had a plan: dress Matt as him, put him in the back of the limo with the window cracked doing the peace sign and the "I love you more," and slip out the back with a second bodyguard. Matt describes the gates opening, paparazzi climbing onto the car, fans screaming a name that wasn't his — and getting back to the suite drenched in sweat to find Michael on the sofa asking how it went. His answer: I don't know how you live like this. Then there's the side of it Matt calls the worst thing he ever witnessed. The sleep. Being sent out at night for two bottles of an over-the-counter sleep remedy, being refused the second by a pharmacist who told him it was dangerous, walking down the road to a different one, and then watching Michael drink both bottles straight down at 2am and get angry when they didn't work. The night he and Uri Geller walked in and found him hooked up to an IV drip, shook him awake, and both raised their voices — the Elvis warning, delivered to a man in his forties who'd been told the same thing by better doctors than the ones he kept around. And the pattern underneath all of it: twelve managers in ten years, because anyone who told Michael something he didn't want to hear was gone. Matt is honest about his own part in it. He was already wealthy before he met Michael and was never on the payroll, which he says should have made him braver than he was. When fans told him a doctor was selling access to Michael's hotel room for ten thousand dollars a visit, he waited until he could get Michael alone and told him — and then didn't hear from him for six months. Two days before Michael died, he called Matt and asked him to come to Los Angeles and sort out the mess. Matt didn't get on the plane. He thought he'd see him in London in a fortnight. It's the regret he still carries, and he describes exactly what he'd do differently. The back half turns to the business, which is where Matt's own expertise starts to show. Michael's ownership of the ATV catalogue — the Beatles songs, "Happy Birthday," a portfolio Matt says was worth over a billion — and the theory Michael himself held about why his last album was released into total silence, why he was summoned to sign records in Times Square, and who stood to gain if he defaulted. Matt was there when he came off that promo run, and he says Michael was crying. There's also his blunt correction of the "secret chamber" tabloid story (it was a panic room, built by the previous owner, and it was needed — people used to parachute into the property), and what it actually does to a person to have a hundred and fifty security staff and never once be alone. The thread running through the whole conversation is what Matt learned about brand-building by watching someone construct the most recognizable identity on earth — including the deliberate decision to make his own life the biggest mystery in the world, and the price that came attached. Part two is coming, and Matt's opened it up: send your questions in advance and nothing's off limits. Matt's franchising content for Rethink listeners: https://skool.com/rethink Listen & subscribe: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0i1GYauyKzywre3YbAlPOT Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rethink-podcast/id1896340851 YouTube (full video): https://www.youtube.com/@RethinkAndGrowRich Get the books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001K7ZD68/allbooks Download the free Rethink Habits planner: https://rethinkhabits.com