I ONCE took a girl on a date to Neverland.

My only excuse is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, in spite of the $5,000 bribe, the sickly three-hour car journey up dark mountain roads, the legal tussle, and the incident with Mike Tyson in the lavatory.

Needless to say, I never saw the girl, or Neverland, again. I did, however, see Michael Jackson another time — but there was a large crowd outside the courthouse and he was busy, so we didn’t talk. I just nodded and waved. I think he saw me.

The date was Michael’s 45th birthday party — to which he had invited 500 “friends”. According to someone I met in a Hollywood bar, 250 of those tickets were being given to Michael’s favourite charity, which would distribute them to its biggest donors. Being a pushy, journalist-type, I made some phone calls. By the end of the day, I had discovered that $5,000, contributed via an eBay account, would do the trick.

Now, don’t get me wrong: $5,000 is a lot of money. But I liked this girl a lot. So, naturally, I called up my boss and asked him to pay for it. “Imagine the story: a day in Neverland!” I said. My boss made a strange noise, which I took as a yes. Then I bought the ticket.

The dubiousness of the transaction was confirmed when I had to drive to a gated mountain retreat, somewhere above Malibu, to collect my gold-coloured Willy Wonka-style pass from a man in dark glasses who wouldn’t tell me his name.

By the time I pulled up outside my date’s apartment, I realised that this adventure could all go horribly wrong.

I imagined eating dinner in Santa Maria police station, with only a black eye and a lawsuit to keep me company.

There is, of course, a good reason why Michael Jackson chooses to live in Neverland: not only is it a long way from Los Angeles, it is also a long way from Santa Barbara, which, in its own right, is a long way from Los Angeles. By the time we got there on my Jeep’s wobbly suspension, my date and I were tired — mainly of each other’s company.

As we passed through Neverland’s unmarked gates, I reassured myself that at least this would be an amusing story for The Times. That was when a 200lb security guard tapped on my window and handed me a pen and a 20-page confidentiality agreement.

And so it was that I entered Michael Jackson’s paradise with the knowledge that both my date and career in journalism were over.

What can I tell you about Neverland? There’s the obvious stuff: the statues of semi-naked children everywhere; the Disney music piped through speakers disguised as rocks; the badly maintained fairground rides; the bored-looking Anaconda in the zoo; the spooky miniature choo-choo train; not to mention, of course, the waxwork figures, holding baskets of sweets and ice cream.

Like any sane, well-adjusted and responsible grown-up . . . I loved it. Especially the flamingos in the pond outside Michael’s bedroom.

My date, however, did not. She kept saying “ew” and threatening to leave. In other words, she acted like every other girl I’ve ever taken anywhere, apart from the one foolish enough to marry me.

I realised the problem with Neverland as I bolted from the lavatory after accidentally slamming the door shut in Mike Tyson’s face. There’s nothing real there.

Even the party felt fake. Michael was absent for the entire day, coming out only to eat his birthday cake on a raised platform, 15ft above his guests. By then, coachloads of screaming fans had arrived from whichever planet Michael Jackson’s fans live on. Apart from Tyson, I wondered if the King of Pop had a single real friend on the property.

On the way out — my date now quiet and distant — I met the man who used to look after Bubbles, Michael’s chimpanzee. Bubbles, I learnt, had become violent and had to leave. But perhaps, I thought, the poor old chimp was just unhappy.

Perhaps Bubbles, like me, had failed to find love in Neverland.

• SPARE A thought for those of us “embedded” with the Michael Jackson trial up in Santa Maria. Having been a real embed in Iraq, I can say that the Jackson trial is much worse.

  After the second day of standing outside the Santa Maria courthouse with 1,200 other journalists, I began to long for the sound of gunfire.

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