Michael Jackson was ultimately destroyed by trusting and allowing damaging people into his life, his former bodyguard has claimed

Fiddes told the Stripping Off with Matt Haycox podcast: "He was the creator of his own destiny but he was very bad at trusting the wrong people.

"In the 10 years I knew him he must have gone through about 12 different managers, some of them very good and some very bad.

"People would get in his ear, the latest friend, the latest family member. People would get in his ear and people would get pushed out, even myself. I found myself pushed out at some points."

Fiddes recalled how the Billie Jean hitmaker - who passed away from an overdose of surgical anaesthetic propofol and other prescription drugs prescribed to him by Conrad Murray, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011 - became reliant on doctors who were frequently seeking to take advantage of his global stardom.

The martial arts expert, who became a close confidant of Jackson's, says the Thriller hitmaker became dependent on painkillers after he was left with second degree burns to his scalp while filming a Pepsi commercial in front of a group of fans at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in January 1984.

Fiddes - who runs his own global franchise of martial arts schools - said: "The biggest issue he had was the doctors. There was always a doctor. I remember one time I went into a bathroom of a hotel, downstairs, Michael's hotel, and I could overhear a doctor talking to a Michael Jackson fan, and the doctor was basically doing a £10,000 deal to introduce the fan to Michael in the hotel suite. I couldn't believe my ears.

"If you go back to Michael with that, you better hope he believes you, because otherwise he'll shut you out and he'll be stuck with some doctor. This is the issue he had.

"The doctors had a way of hooking Michael in with the medication, making him depend on it."

Fiddes would act as the Man in the Mirror singer's bodyguard when he visited the UK but explained that he never received payment for his work as he didn't want any money.

He said: "I wasn't employed, I wasn't paid. He offered me his money but I didn't want his money as I had my own businesses to run.

"He would just call me and say, 'I'm at the airport, I'm about to fly to England. Terminal 5 Heathrow.' Pick me up and come and hang out with me."