He regaled the publication: “He needs a lung transplant, but may be too weak to go through with it.

“He also has emphysema and chronic gastrointestinal bleeding, which his doctors have had a lot of trouble stopping.”

In a shocking final comment, the biographer added: “It’s the bleeding that’s the most problematic part. It could kill him.”

Within the following year, Jackson would fall ill and eventually die of cardiac arrest.