That fleeting clip of Colonel Gaddafi as he makes his first public reaction to the growing Libyan revolution has echoes for me at least of another tragic, other worldly figure - Michael Jackson.

Even the umbrella Gaddafi's fidgeting with seems Jacksonesque. Strange clothes, that umbrella, the hint of darkness, it could be the Thriller video all over again. Except Gaddafi is an unmitigated grotesque monster; Jackson, on the other hand, merely a faun, lost in a mysterious, bewildering world.