A ranch with a zoo, a cinema and fairground rides. A child growing up there ought to be spoiled to the bone. Paris Jackson, on Alex Cooper's podcast, explained that the rule of the house was the exact opposite - and it sounds like the sort of thing plenty of parents claim to do and very few actually enforce.

The morning started in a room converted into a classroom. "I'd wake up and go to the room that was our classroom, and that's where we 'went' to school," she says. The quotation marks around "went" are hers - she is the one pointing out the absurdity of a private school in your own living room.

The rule for the attractions was clear: the reward is earned. "If you're good, you do your tasks, your homework and the things you have to do, then at the weekend you can go and see the animals, ride the attractions or go to the cinema." So the whole place existed - and sat shut five days a week.

The line that carries the whole point

Cooper asked her what would have happened if all of it had been freely available at any time. Paris's answer is the sharpest moment of the entire conversation: "It would have been great, but no. I'd probably have grown up and turned into a jerk."

That is not the sentence of somebody defending themselves. It is the sentence of a person who understood why somebody cut off their access to something that was theirs. Among the stories about that family - and there are enough of them to fill a library - this is one of the rare ones where the daughter signs off on the father's decision as the right call.

About the eulogy, the one the entire planet watched, she says it was not prepared. "It just happened in the moment." And she has not watched the footage once since. Seventeen years on, the most-watched moment of her life is the only one she refuses to look at.