Prince's entourage face police questioning as it is claimed the star was killed by the same painkiller addiction as Michael Jackson 

Police reportedly want to question Prince's entourage who were on board the flight on which he allegedly had a painkiller overdose days before he died.

Sources claimed the 57-year-old overdosed on Percocet painkillers - the same drugs that Michael Jackson took - after a performance in Atlanta just under a week ago.

His friends and employees, as well as flight crew, will reportedly now be quizzed by investigators over whether he was prescribed too many painkillers.

The musical icon's anxious team allegedly felt his condition was so critical they diverted the Gulfstream plane to Moline, Illinois to get him medical attention - despite being just 48 minutes from his house.

Prince's sudden death in a vast home where he lived a reportedly solitary existence has elements of the tragic death of his musical rival Michael Jackson

A police source said: 'We understand Prince suffered chronic pain after developing a hip problem. Naturally he took painkillers to ease his troubles but police are looking into if he was prescribed too man

The news, reported by the Mirror, that the Prince's entourage will be questioned comes in the wake of the haunting comment Prince made to 200 fans who attended a 'dance party' at his vast Minneapolis compound last Saturday night.

'Wait a few days before you waste any prayers,' he said at the event, as they had to wait just five days before mourning the loss of the superstar musician.

In the sad tradition of music legends who die before their time in lonely, undignified circumstances, Prince was found unresponsive in a lift inside his Paisley Park property at 9.43am on Thursday morning. He was pronounced dead just 14 minutes later.

The confusion around his demise was revealed in the emergency call to summon an ambulance, made by an unidentified man who didn't appear to have much clue where to summon it to.

Confirming that 'we're at Prince's house' and that 'the person is dead here', he couldn't be more specific on where they were than 'Minneapolis, Minnesota'. An unidentified female voice can then be heard giving him the exact address.

Prince's sudden death in a vast home where he lived a reportedly solitary existence has elements of the tragic death of his musical rival Michael Jackson who, raddled by addiction to powerful painkillers, lapsed into unconsciousness while lying in bed, resisting frantic efforts to resuscitate him.

Just how similar their deaths may have been was the subject of intense speculation last night as it was claimed that Prince had been treated for an overdose of similar drugs just six days before he died. According to several sources cited by the website TMZ, doctors gave the 57-year-old star a 'save shot', an emergency injection usually administered only in dire circumstances to counteract the effects of an overdose of an opioid drug — in other words, one designed to combat pain.

Just how similar their deaths may have been was the subject of intense speculation last night as it was claimed that Prince had been treated for an overdose of similar drugs just six days before he died

TMZ later reported that the drug was Percocet, a powerful narcotic painkiller whose main ingredient is oxycodone, a highly addictive opioid.

Another brand of oxycodone is OxyContin, to which police said Michael Jackson was 'heavily addicted' in the final months of his life.

It is believed that Prince was taking the drug to deal with chronic hip pain, which he has reportedly been suffering from for the past decade as a result of years wearing high-heeled boots.

While Jackson initially took painkillers to cope with pain from drastic plastic surgery and a fire that severely damaged his scalp, Prince is understood to have been battling for years with the consequences of his refusal to have a double hip operation.

Although it is rumoured he had minor surgery in 2010, he was understood to have refused a more extensive operation because his faith as a Jehovah's Witness barred him from having blood transfusions.

Prince had been treated in a hospital in Illinois last Friday — the day before his final concert and those assurances about his health — after a private plane bringing him back from a concert in Atlanta had to make an emergency landing.

His spokesman claimed he had been suffering from 'flu symptoms', but that hardly sounded like a sufficient reason for bringing down a plane just an hour away from its destination.

Doctors reportedly advised the singer to stay in hospital for at least 24 hours but, in his typically grand fashion, Prince reportedly refused to stay in the hospital because it couldn't give him a private room.

In what might have been a fatal error, he and his entourage left just three hours after he arrived, with witnesses claiming he was 'not doing well'. Once he got home, however, Prince announced on Twitter: 'I am transformed.'

In fact, it is understood he had been suffering from flu for weeks previously. He had told fans in Atlanta that he'd had to cancel earlier dates because he had been 'a little under the weather'. For most of his performance at this concert, he sat at a piano instead of charging around with a guitar with his usual frenetic energy.

An audience member recalled: 'There was a tiny bit of gravel in his voice from time to time, but that was the only indication that he'd felt ill the week before.' After one song, he got up and briefly left the stage. Fans said they thought he had simply been overcome by emotion.

Local people believe Prince threw last Saturday's 'dance party' at his home in a last-minute attempt to prove he was well. If so, he was only partly successful. Prince, sporting a large Afro hairstyle, appeared for only five minutes just after midnight, and showed off a new purple guitar and his new purple Yamaha piano.

Prince appeared before 200 fans at a 'dance party' at his compound in what was to be his final show 

He gave the briefest of musical performances, knocking out Chopsticks on the piano, followed by a short brief, classical-style instrumental piece. Fans who had paid $10 for tickets had been expecting him to perform a little more, but had to make do with listening to a recording of his Atlanta concert played over the Paisley Park sound system. A fan who took a picture of him drew a sharp response from Prince, who shouted: 'Security!' but allowed her to stay.

Earlier in the day, he had been spotted with a companion out cycling around a nearby shopping centre. Prince was later seen buying CDs in an early-evening visit to a music shop.

The following day, he was spotted on his bike again, pottering around on a road just outside his estate.

For all his reclusive reputation, Prince was regularly seen out and about around Minneapolis. The evidently ailing star was last spotted publicly on Wednesday night outside a local Walgreen's pharmacy, some 24 hours after he appeared at a Minneapolis jazz club.

A witness described him as looking 'frail and nervous' on what had been his fourth visit to the chemist's that week. Staff noted the slightly built, 5ft 2in star was looking more fragile than usual as he paced around outside by his car, waiting for a companion to come out of the shop.

A four-hour post mortem was carried out yesterday but his cause of death is not yet known, and a toxicology report is likely to take weeks. So has Prince joined the wearyingly long line of pop stars who have been killed off by drugs?

He was seen walking out of a Walgreens pharmacy near his Minnesota estate just 15 hours before he was pronounced dead on Thursday

A teetotal vegan — at least in later years — Prince guarded his privacy fiercely and he had never been embroiled in any specific drug abuse scandal. One of the advantages of never leaving his Midwestern hometown, and retreating into a vast home that looked more like a trendy business park than a celebrity mansion, was that he was able largely to avoid the scrutiny of the outside world.

His risqué lyrics certainly suggested a man with a huge appetite for hedonism, and some of those closest to him were certainly heavily involved in hard drugs.

A former girlfriend in the Eighties, Denise Matthews, whom Prince dubbed 'Vanity' while he helped launch her singing career, was addicted to crack cocaine for years.

Although the sparkly silver walking cane Prince regularly carried around in recent times was assumed to have been a fashion accessory, he had suffered health issues since childhood. Born epileptic, he said he had been troubled by seizures for years.

Now, investigators looking into the circumstances of his death will have to sift for clues through a 70,000 sq ft home that is as cloaked in mystery as the superstar who inhabited it.

Parallels with Michael Jackson may go further than a fatal addiction to painkillers. Both stars, who were rivals for the pop king crown in their Eighties heyday, struck rather lonely figures, intense workaholics who rattled around in vast mansions.

Prince's relatives are now facing a battle over his £220 million fortune which could be as bruising as that which tore apart Jackson's family.

The musician died with no wife and no children, meaning that unless he wrote a will his sister Tyka stands to inherit his estate. Prince also has four half brothers and three half sisters, who could lay claim to their share just as the King of Pop's family did to his assets.

Another beneficiary of his estate could the the Jehovah's Witnesses, of which Prince — following his mother — was a member since 2001.

Along with a home in the Turks & Caicos Islands, topping the list of land assets is Paisley Park, estimated to be worth £6.9 million, which was designed and built by Prince in the late Eighties as a vast recording and performing complex.

It includes a concert venue that can accommodate 1,000 people, a smaller venue kitted out like a nightclub, and a meditation room for when the artistic excitement becomes too much. Even Prince's fridge was bizarre — stacked with samples from around the world of his favourite condiment, mustard.

The most secret part of the bizarre compound was a maximum security underground room known as The Vault containing digital copies of the star's music including — it is rumoured — hundreds of unreleased songs dating back to the Eighties.

A glass pyramid on top of the factory-like complex would – in a possible homage to the royal flag over Buckingham Palace — glow purple, Prince's favourite colour, when the star was at home. And yesterday, from Niagara Falls to Sydney, landmarks and buildings including New York's Empire State Building were lit up in the colour. Purple even shone in deep space as NASA tweeted a picture of a nebula in the same hue.

Even President Obama said he and his ambassador to London played Purple Rain and Delirious before he went for talks with David Cameron yesterday.

'I love Prince because he put out great music and he was a great performer,' he said. As speculation whirls about the cause of the singer's death, the most bizarre theory came yesterday from the soul diva Aretha Franklin. She suggested he may have died of the Zika virus, a mosquito-born illness linked to serious birth defects. Symptoms include muscular pain, mild fever and joint pain, although it is rarely fatal.

'They're saying flu-like symptoms,' she said on TV. 'I'm wondering if it had anything to do with this Zika virus.' Prince, who always loved to spread confusion about himself, would probably have been delighted at such an exotic suggestion.

But it seems almost inevitable that something other than a mosquito bite killed the star known as His Royal Badness.