News this week that Elvis Presley actually visited England in 1958 and was shown around London by cheeky rock n roller Tommy Steele came as no surprise to seventy year old cabbie Dave Smalls who spoke to The Spoof's reporter Conor McMuffin.
"Oh yeah, I knew Tommy from his days on the barrows down East Lane," said Smalls. "This was long before he trod the boards. Used to sell salad, you know lettuce, radishes, spring onions, from his dad's stall. Nice boy."
It appears, as revealed by Steele's friend and theatre impresario Bill Kenwright, that Elvis was on leave from his German army base and phoned fellow rock n roller Steele asking for a guided tour of England's capital city. First reports said that the two hep cats merely visited the main tourist hotspots like Buckingham Palace and Madame Tussauds but Smalls revealed that the tour involved much more.
"We actually took him down The Blue for a look at the real London," said the cab driver. "We got him some jellied eels but when we asked him if he wanted to come down Cold Blow Lane to see The Lions he said he weren't a fan of the Circus. He was a right one. 'No, you nana,' we said, 'Millwall.' He weren't none the wiser until he saw the boys in blue stroll out onto the pitch at the old Den. 'Ah, soccer!' he said. 'Turn it up,' Tommy's gone. 'Football.' We had a laugh about that.
"No-one recognised him in his army uniform, not even the gels. Tommy's told the boys it's his cousin from Kentucky on a furlough and they've welcomed him with open arms. Before you know it Elvis is joining in with a rousing chorus of 'Let em come, let em come, let em come, let em all come down to the Den.' Of course he prefaced his version with 'a wella wella wella...' You can imagine. One of the Aldershot fans was gonna bop him one. Had to get the stewards to restrain him.
"Come half time, Elvis has helped himself to Tommy's hip flask and when we've took him back to his Corporal that night he's singing, 'No one likes us, no one likes us, no one likes us, we don't care,' for all he was worth. Amazing.
"Tommy swore me to secrecy by the way. I shouldn't even be telling you this much."
Fans of the King will be gutted, as the say down The Blue, to discover that the great man was on their patch and failed to wiggle his hips and do his Hillbilly Cat routine for the locals. However, rumours abound that there exists a secret recording of Elvis's Millwall terrace chant sessions cut later in Steele's home studio but the ageing English rocker was remaining tight lipped about the whole affair. Christie's of London estimated that such a recording, if it really does exist, could be priceless.
During the 1960s Tommy Steele, like Elvis, sold out and went on to become an all round family entertainer, appearing in smash hit musical films such as 'Half a Sixpence' and 'Finian's Rainbow'. Presley died in 1977 at his Graceland mansion suffering from, among other things, 'compacted faeces'. It is now believed that, rather than cheese burgers, his last meal may possibly have been pie and mash with liquor, a meal for which he could have developed a taste during his time in south London.
