Jackson claims spider put him on crutches

Michael Jackson's bizarre knack for keeping himself in the headlines showed no sign of letting up yesterday after he arrived at a California court hearing on crutches – made necessary, he said, because of a spider bite on his left foot.

The 44-year-old pop star was resuming his testimony in a civil suit brought by a concert promoter who has accused him of backing out of a pair of millennium performances and exposing him to tens of millions of dollars in losses.

The last time Mr Jackson took the stand, three weeks ago, he elicited gasps from the gallery as he removed his trademark surgical mask and revealed a freak-show of a face, including an alarmingly raw, peeling nose. That was just before he jetted off to Berlin and dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, from a hotel balcony.

On Tuesday, Mr Jackson turned up at court in Santa Maria, near his Neverland ranch, with a large white sock over his left foot, and crutches. He did not entirely explain the spider bite, although he said his pet tarantulas were not responsible. His face, meanwhile, looked better, and he did not use a surgical mask at all.

This latest gossip about his appearance successfully distracted the public from the merits of the lawsuit, in which Mr Jackson has insisted it was his business partner, Marcel Avram, who pulled out of the concerts first. The pop star's testimony has been sufficiently short on detail, however, for a plaintiff's lawyer to ask him at one point if he suffered from memory loss. Mr Jackson replied: "Not that I can recall."

Asked about the concert plans, Mr Jackson said: "That's administrative work. That's not what I do. I'm the entertainer."

Originally, the plan was for Mr Jackson to perform two concerts on either side of the international dateline on New Year's Eve 1999, one in Sydney and the other in Honolulu. Mr Avram says the cancellation of the shows left him $21m out of pocket. He has also accused Mr Jackson of failing to rehearse.

Mr Jackson insisted that he had rehearsed: by himself, in front of his bathroom mirror.