It took just hours after Michael Jackson's death for the first conspiracy theories to start circulating. The most popular is that the singer faked his death in order to escape the media spotlight and impending bankruptcy.

Here The Daily Telegraph takes a look at six other celebrity deaths and the theories that have sprung up around them.

RIVER PHOENIX

The young actor had a squeaky clean image and frequently spoke of his abhorrence of drugs. And yet, on Oct 31, 1993, he collapsed from an overdose of heroin and cocaine outside a Hollywood nightclub owned by Johnny Depp. Many people have questioned the official story pointing to Phoenix's public opposition to drug abuse and a lack of any needle marks on his body.

KURT COBAIN

The lead singer of Nirvana was found dead at his home in Seattle on April 8, 1994. The singer - who had disappeared from a drug rehabilitation clinic - had, according to his wife, Courtney Love, been suicidal and a suicide note was found. The initial police report stated that Cobain had been found with a shotgun across his chest and an autopsy ruled that he had died by a single gunshot wound to the head and that he had taken a large amount of heroin.

However, Tom Grant, a private investigator hired by Love to find Cobain after he disappeared from the clinic, believed that the singer was murdered. He claimed that the amount of heroin in Cobain's bloodstream would have made it impossible for him to have put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Grant claimed that an unknown assassin had administered the drug and then shot Cobain.

JOHN LENNON

The former Beatle was shot dead outside the Dakota building in New York where he lived by Mark David Chapman on Dec 8, 1980. Chapman was jailed for murder and is still in prison. The most popular conspiracy theory over Lennon's death is that he was killed by remote control. Those who believe this claim that Chapman was programmed by US government agents to kill Lennon and that they used the novel Catcher in the Rye as a signal to go ahead with the operation.

But there appears to be very little motive for such an assassination by the US government other than a supposed dislike of the musician's radical views by the newly-elected Reagan administration.

DAVID CARRADINE

The 72-year-old star of the Kung Fu TV series and Kill Bill films was found dead on June 4 this year in his room at the Swissotel Nail Lert Park Hotel in Bangkok. Police reported that he had been found hanging in a wardrobe. Other more lurid reports suggested he had died after some kind of sado-masochistic incident. A pathologist stated that autoerotic asphyxiation was the most likely cause of death and a police chief said that CCTV footage at the hotel showed that nobody else had been involved.

The day after his death, Carradine's family's lawyer dismissed the idea that the actor had committed suicide and suggested that he could have been murdered by a gang of gongfu assassins after it was revealed he was planning to uncover groups in the martial arts underworld.

MARILYN MONROE

The actress was found dead at her home in Los Angeles on Aug 5, 1962. An autopsy found a cocktail of the drugs choral hydrate and Nembutal in her system and the county coroner recorded the cause of death as acute barbiturate poisoning by accidental overdose.

However, speculation over Monroe's death continues to this day and centres on her relationships with US President John F Kennedy and his brother, Robert Kennedy. Most of the theories allege that she was murdered either by the CIA or the Mafia because she knew too much about the Kennedy brothers' links to organised crime.

ELVIS PRESLEY

Presley was found dead on the floor of his bathroom in Graceland, Memphis, on Aug 16, 1977. An investigation and autopsy found that he had crawled several feet from the toilet before he died. Two autopsies into his death (one in 1994) concluded that drugs did not play a part and that he was killed by a sudden heart attack. But, given Presley's widely-documented prescription drug abuse, most experts believe that he was killed by a cocktail of drugs.

And yet there are a million and one theories surrounding the death of Presley - by far the most persistent being that he somehow faked his own death in a bid to boost flagging record sales. Hundreds of thousands of supposed sightings of The King have been claimed in the three decades since.

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