Dear Michael Jackson: The reclusive singer is reported to have wed the daughter of Elvis Presley. But is this really a pop marriage made in heaven?

How could you? Knowing how many of us were saving ourselves for you, how could you go off and marry that Presley girl?

At first I, like your publicists, felt sure the whole story of your wedding was an elaborate hoax. But Judge Hugo Alvarez Perez seemed quite certain about the identities of the participants who arrived in a white Toyota van for the pounds 20 Dominican ceremony - hey, you really know how to show a girl a good time, Michael - and was prudent enough to whisk away his children and servants and, presumably, have the horses safely stabled, too, before the grisly event took place. Workers at your Neverland estate confirmed that, yes, you and Lisa Marie had indeed been seeing each other secretly behind our backs, and even your own press officer, Bob Jones, verified the signature on the marriage licence.

Your previous female escorts have been easy to dismiss as strictly platonic liaisons with professional virgins such as Brooke Shields or surrogate mother-figures like Diana Ross and Liz Taylor, but this, clearly, is different. Lisa Marie, we hear, made all the running in the courtship, catching your attention with balloon-bedecked billets doux, though such details as have leaked out about the wedding ceremony - the separate rooms, the lack of honeymoon, the desultory nature of the marriage vows, the absence of even a bridal kiss - suggest this particular liaison was not entirely undertaken in the heights of romantic passion.

Unkind souls have suggested that she was pursuing a music career in a roundabout way after having her rockin' country demo rejected by Sony. But if that were the case, surely she'd either have targeted current country-music king Garth Brooks, whose records outsell even your own, or, having inherited around dollars 100m recently, just cut out the middleman and bought her own record company?

Unkinder souls still have mentioned the Elvis factor. You're hardly likely to be impressed by Lisa Marie's wealth, but you have always been fascinated with the unique - witness your failed attempt to buy the poor Elephant Man's remains. You were more successful with the Beatles, nicking away ownership of Northern Songs from right under Paul McCartney's nose, and this alliance between the House Of Jackson and the House Of Presley may well have appealed to your sense of the exceptional. And just think of that back catalogue.

Whether there will ever be an actual consummation of the union remains to be seen, but my guess is that you never even thought of that: for you, this is more a reinforcement of your own specialness, and the result will be a dynasty measured in column-inches rather than empire or offspring.

Our feelings at this time, then, are

with those loved ones so wilfully neglected in your pursuit of the exceptional. How could you treat poor Bubbles so heartlessly?

(Photograph omitted)