Jackson's MTV Awards confusion

Michael Jackson’s confusing acceptance speech for the award of ‘Artist of the Millennium’ at the MTV VMAs on Thursday night turned out to be an embarrassing mistake on Jacko’s part. He was on stage to receive a birthday cake to celebrate his 44th birthday and was given an MTV statuette as a token of appreciation. But in her introduction to the presentation, Britiney Spears said that Jackson was, in her opinion, the artist of the millennium – leading Jackson to assume he’d been got on stage to be officially labelled with the hounour. He subsequently gave a long acceptance speech for an award that didn’t exist - "When I was a little boy in Indiana, if someone had told me as a musician I would be getting the artist of the millennium award, I wouldn't have believed it," he said. MTV spokesman Graham James confirmed the mistake on Friday. Host Jimmy Fallon had alluded as much at the time telling the audience he had his own artist of the millennium award, "because they're giving them backstage to everyone."