I saw Michael Jackson on the pavement recently. He was talking to Marilyn Monroe and Darth Vader.

I thought the Dark Lord of the Sith was smoking, but then I remembered I was in Hollywood. You’re more likely to see a real Tatooine resident than a Californian having a cigarette. Turns out the jobbing actor in costume who, alongside fake Marilyn and fake Jacko, charges tourists to have a picture taken with him, was just sucking on a pen.

Vader, Monroe and now Jackson. All dead. It may seem tasteless but death is big business in Hollywood as Scott Michaels, owner of Dearly Departed Tours, knows. Every day his van trundles round the streets of LA with clients from all over the world inside having a good old gawp at where the mighty have fallen.

A drug overdose here, a stabbing there, all accompanied by vivid commentary and recorded 911 emergency calls. Not recommended for children or the squeamish, but for the voyeuristic and curious, it can be a highlight of a trip to the City of Angels.

Over three hours the tragic history tour stops at nearly 100 sites — outside the Viper Room nightclub on Sunset Boulevard where River Phoenix collapsed and died in 1993; near the famous Hollywood sign from which 24-year old actress Peg Entwistle leapt her last leap in 1932 (from the letter H, if you must know); the hotels where John Belushi and Janis Joplin snorted their last snort and by an ordinary-looking home in the Los Feliz neighbourhood where members of Charles Manson’s “family” murdered Rosemary and Leno LaBianca in 1969, having also killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate the day before.

There are lighter moments, thank goodness. We pause at the place where, on June 27, 1995, Hugh Grant parked his car and had a moment of indiscretion with Divine Brown (allegedly, the police’s attention was drawn to the BMW because the brake light kept going on and off, on and off as Grant’s excited foot went up and down), the high school where Grease was filmed and a loo break in the very toilets where George Michael relieved himself in his own way in front of a police officer.

From next week, when the hoopla has calmed down and the police barracades removed, the tour will also visit Jackson’s last residence , 100 North Carolwood Drive. “I think we’re all so interested in his death because, with Twitter, everyone found out immediatel,” Michaels says..

He says he won’t be halting outside the more famous Neverland ranch, which is actually 100 miles away in Santa Barbara. “People say we’re being ghoulish stopping at Carolwood so soon after he’s died,” he continues. “But they’re the same people who are selling T-shirts and soda pops with Jackson’s face on.”

The tour drops me off in Hollywood. Darth and Marilyn are nowhere to be seen. I think we like gawping at celebrities because they’re not like us, are they? Their skin is always flawless. They wake up in the morning and their hair is perfect. They don’t sweat. But then one day they stop breathing, and the bubble bursts, the illusion is shattered. Of course they are just like us — they die too .

Information: 001 212 209 3370, www.dearlydepartedtours.com, $40 (£25).

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