EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE: Elvis lived but it was a close call

I WOULD be lying if I said I’d always wanted to see Elvis, but had that been the case my dreams were about to come true a couple of hundred times over — except dreams never really do come true.

An Elvis convention was coming to town — well, to a holiday camp just outside to be precise — and I had been assigned to cover it for the Express & Echo in Exeter.

It was one of those nights that could go either way in terms of entertainment, but to me it was always going to be more about those shabby approximations of “The King” wandering around the venue rather than the collection of Elvises (Elvii?) strutting their stuff on stage in their blue suede shoes.

There were short Elvises, tall Elvises, hairy Elvises, bald Elvises, fat Elvises and fatter Elvises and all were dressed up in a manner they believed reflected their favourite period of Tupelo’s finest — the burger years seemed to be the most popular.

Some were carrying teddy bears around, there was indeed a fast food bar and attendees, the majority dressed in white — maybe there had been a cricket match earlier in the day — were half-wittily offering up mutterings of “Elvis has left the building” or “uh-huh”.

Most were English, but there were also Americans, Canadians, Germans and Scandinavians.

I interviewed a few and other than telling me that he was the greatest performer that ever lived — what about Keith Harris and Orville? Jim Bowen? — they couldn’t really explain why they had travelled so far to hear repeated tuneless renditions of Wooden Heart, Hound Dog or Can’t Help Falling In Love.

Was it just to be around like-minded people? Surely it’s not hard to find other Elvis fans? Maybe it’s a little more tricky to locate a collection of people who want to look like him (sort of) though. Perhaps they simply didn’t want to be Lonesome Tonight! Uh-huh! I mean ho-ho!

Memorabilia was being snapped up. T-shirts, records, photographs, badges, scarves. Anything you could want or not want. I purchased a postcard of a not at the peak of physical fitness Elvis with a teddy bear. I wonder what happened to that. It might have been worth a couple of pence now.

Any questioning that strayed off the straight and narrow was greeted with displeasure. “Hey, Mr McPresley (Scottish Elvis) do you think he might still be alive and working in a chip shop?”

“You can have a Glasgow kiss for that son, yer clatty wee radge.”

I’d been hoping for more. I don’t know what, but there was no real sense of celebration, no joy at his life or music, and that could very well have been the point.

The message was that Elvis lives, and if that’s to be taken to its logical conclusion given his physical and mental difficulties, he would hardly have been at the peak of his powers as the convention rock and rolled into Exmouth sometime in the mid-1990s.

Elvis was living in the eyes of the gathered campers but he no longer had much of a life and they were living theirs through him.

No criticism here. No laughter at what they were doing — it just wasn’t as funny as I had hoped — merely an observation at what seemed to be a group of people slowly pelvic thrusting their way to an inevitable conclusion.