King Of Britain

It is four decades since Elvis Presley, the quintessential American, died.Yet his roots lie in the British Isles, reveals Andrew M Brown.

- Andrew M Brown.

It’s hard to believe that nearly forty years have passed since it fell to Reginald Bosanquet – at the very end of News at Ten on 16th August 1977 – to announce to the British people that there were unconfirmed reports Elvis Presley had died.

There was a commercial break and then, in an ITN news flash, Reggie confirmed the awful news. Back then,all the news readers carefully spaced out the words ‘rock – and – roll’.

Elvis probably only visited Britain for two hours, when stopping offer refuelling at Prestwick USAF base in 1960. But he always had a peculiar affinity with the British, and he himself was more British than you might realise.

Along with those powerful genetic and cultural influences most people know about – the Red Indian ancestry, the black music that shaped him – the great bulk of Elvis’s heritage, like that of most white southerners, was English, Scottish, Irish and (possibly) Welsh. Oh, and there was a dash of Norman, too.

None of this is surprising if you consider Elvis’s personality. He is entirely lacking in that dourness said to characterise the heavily Scandinavian Midwestern states such as Minnesota. Crucial is his sense of humour, which Albert Goldman, in his sneering biography, describes as ‘his deepest but least recognised trait of mind’.

Elvis loved silly British comedy and would unwind from the pressures of his touring schedule with reruns of Monty Python and Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau films. He was a close student of Sellers and, when Dr Strange love came out, in 1964, he watched it three times in a row, plus three repeats of the final reel.