Pop superstar Michael Jackson arrived at court on crutches on Tuesday, saying he was bitten by a spider that made his foot swell up.

The singer was giving further evidence in a $21m (�13.5m) case brought by a concert promoter who accuses Jackson of pulling out of two millennium concerts.

The star turned up at the courthouse in Santa Maria, California, without his customary surgical mask, but also without one shoe because he said his swollen foot would not fit inside it.

Jackson denies pulling out of the millennium concerts

"It's a spider bite. It's really bad," he said. "If I showed it to you, you'd be shocked."

He insisted the bite did not come from one of his pet tarantulas, but from a smaller creature that came from the bush around his Neverland ranch.

"I love tarantulas, but not the little kind," he told reporters.

Jackson has recently hit the headlines for his appearances in court and for dangling his son from a hotel balcony in Berlin.

He grew frustrated by journalists who shouted questions about the Berlin incident, but later playfully pulled faces and made horns with his hands for the court photographer.

Jackson says he did not pull out of the millennium concerts planned for Sydney, Australia and Honolulu.

He argues that German promoter Marcel Avram cancelled them because he was worried they would not be profitable enough.

'Entertainer'

When asked about the details of how the concerts were organised, Jackson often said he could not remember or did not know.

"That's administrative work. That's not what I do. I'm the entertainer," he told the court.

When Mr Avram's lawyer asked Jackson if he suffered from memory problems, the singer replied: "Not that I can recall."

On the first day of the hearing in November, Jackson gave evidence with a plaster apparently holding his nose together.

The following day, he arrived at court four hours late, citing "medical reasons".