The dance step is one of Jackson's biggest claims to fame - the embattled singer is so closely associated with it that he called his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk.

But now Jackson's older sister LaToya is claiming that a dancer from the television show Soul Train taught Michael how to moonwalk.

"I don't know if you had this show called the Soul Train," she told British television host Frank Skinner recently. "There was this dancer Geoffrey, who was always doing the moonwalk on that show. He taught Michael how to do it."

LaToya said that it had been called the backslide, but claimed Michael changed the name after he learned it from Geoffrey.