Liz: I shared bed with Jacko

Elizabeth Taylor has admitted sharing a bed with Michael Jackson at his Neverland ranch.

But the veteran actress insisted there was no funny business going on.

Miss Taylor, 74, discussed her relationship with the disgraced star, who was cleared last year of child molestation charges, during a U.S. TV interview with chat show host Larry King.

She said she had 'never been so angry in all my life' as when Jackson went on trial accused of ten offences at the ranch in California.

'I've been there when his young nephews were there and we were all in the bed watching television - there was nothing abnormal about it.

'There was no touchy-feely going on. We laughed like children and we watched a lot of Walt Disney. There was nothing odd about it.'

Miss Taylor was a child star in films such as Lassie Come Home and National Velvet, while Jackson performed with his family pop group The Jackson Five from an early age.

The actress told King that she and 47-year-old Jackson are 'very much alike'.

She added: 'We both had horrible childhoods. Working at the age of nine was not a childhood for me - and he started at three. That certainly isn't a childhood.'

The actress, who won two Oscars in the 1960s for her roles in Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, appeared on King's show to rebut magazine reports that she is dying and has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

'If they want to hear that I'm dead, well sorry folks, I'm not,' she declared. 'And I don't plan on it either. I don't even think about it.

'Do I look like I'm dying? Do I look like or sound like I've got Alzheimer's? I think they are trying to sell magazines and the only way they can do it is by being dirty. They've never sold those dirty magazines with clean stories.

'They have nothing else dirty to write about anybody else - that's all I can think of.

'Some audience out there, and don't ask me who they are, but there are millions, they like scandal, they like filth.'

Miss Taylor, who is crippled with osteoporosis and congestive heart problems, arrived at CNN's Californian studios in a wheelchair. She smiled and managed to wave at the gathered crowd of well-wishers.

The woman once proclaimed the most beautiful in the world wore a green and purple full-length kaftan with bright green heels.

Eight-times-married Miss Taylor said she had been forced into using the wheelchair because of a worsening of a condition she was born with - scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine. These days she is rarely seen in public. Her last screen appearance was in 2001, in the little-known U.S. TV movie, These Old Broads.

In a career spanning over 60 years, Miss Taylor has made 55 movies and ten television films. She has suffered two bouts of near-fatal viral pneumonia, a brain tumour, three hip replacements and multiple fractures of the spine.

She also underwent two periods in rehab for addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs.

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson has been touring Japanese orphanages looking for another child to adopt, according to U.S. reports.

The star is currently fighting his former second wife, Debbie Rowe, over custody of the two children she bore him.

Miss Rowe, a former dermatologist's assistant, is the mother of Jackson's oldest son Prince Michael, aged nine, and eight-yearold daughter Paris. He has another son, adopted four-year-old Prince Michael II, whose mother has not been identified.

Celebrity columnist Roger Friedman said: 'Michael Jackson's weekend trip to Japan was not all about publicity and quick self-gratification for a dimmed star with no fans.

'Jackson toured orphanages perhaps with a reason. I'm told he's looking for more kids to add to his current collection of three.'

Miss Rowe has made significant legal gains lately in her long-running fight to see her children and Jackson could be taken to the United States Supreme Court. Legal experts say Miss Rowe is in a good position to have access to her children and might even gain custody of them.

On the one recent occasion when she was allowed to see the youngsters, Jackson apparently refused to let her tell them she was their mother.