Michael Jackson asked daughter to bleach his skin

The 'Heal The World' singer's former physician Dr Conrad Murray has claimed in a tell-all book about the late star - who died in 2009 from a fatal overdose of prescription drugs - that he asked his middle child, now aged 18, to slather on the ointment because she was whiter than his sons Prince, 19 and Blanket, 14 and it wouldn't effect her.

Extracts published in the Daily Mirror newspaper from Dr Murray's book, set to be published Tuesday, read: "Every evening I applied the cream. I wore gloves, since careless handling could lead to my own patchy skin appearance. I was concerned when Michael told me that sometimes he had Paris put on the cream.

"Michael thought that since Paris is the 'whitest' of his children, there was no risk to her in turning lighter. Still, as I warned him, everybody has different shades of white, and I highly ­recommended that Paris not apply the permanent skin lightener. Michael assured me he wouldn't again ask Paris. But he was so insistent on getting his daily applications that it wouldn't surprise me if he occasionally asked her to help out."

Michael - who was born black - accounted for his gradually whiter skin over the years by telling the press he suffered from a lack of pigment in his skin, a condition known as vitiligo.

But he confessed to Dr Murray that it was a lie.

Murray wrote: "He admitted to me that he often had to tell little lies by denying the use of products to bleach his skin, and to even his skin tone. But one thing he did not lie about was he wanted to be a white man."

Meanwhile, the Doctor - who was jailed for manslaughter in 2011 after administering Michael's fatal overdose - believes his transformation was a bid to forget his unhappy childhood.

He said: "His primary purpose for changing his skin tone was to help him erase memories of many past adversities in his life... He wanted to look in the mirror and see the old Michael Jackson was annihilated, everything foul he had experienced was gone."