There’s a guy works down the chip shop, swears he’s Elvis’s brother.

Kirsty McColl was a great artist. She wrote and performed some great tunes in her short life, maybe none more fab than her duet with Shane McGowan on Fairly Tale of New York (the only Christmas tune that matters) but she will be forever associated with her debut, slightly comic ditty, There’s a guy works down the chip shop, swears he’s Elvis.

My friend Tim Dalton has told me about when he tour managed her and how she hated having to perform it live. His suggestion was to stick it right at the start of the encore and pretend she’d never sang it.

Right now we are back in the early 80’s and I am in my final year of school. I go to a nice school with an ivy covered façade and where the teachers wear gowns and there is lot’s of tradition. We are well regarded and subsequently seem to attract some very unique happenings. For instance, The Skids turned up in our playground one lunch time and did a gig off the back of a lorry. So did Adam Ant.

Right now I have just sat down in 3^rd year assembly and am awaiting our head master, Mr Andrews, to cluck on a while about his two favourite subjects. Sport and Pink Floyd. However, our school hall stage also has two other guests upon it this morning, and their attire is both intriguing and questionable.

The two guys of interest are sitting stage left, looking like they are at a casting call for Broke Back Mountain, The Musical. Sky blue Texan shirts with white piping and rhinestones sewn on them, cowboy hats and boots.

Mr Andrews runs us through the cricket league scores but dispenses with his usual deconstruction of some aspect of Dark Side of the Moon, and simply tells us we have guests, before sitting down.

The first guy to stand up is a ringer for that conspiracy nutter Alex Jones. He takes the stage like he is at Wembley stadium and immediately tells everyone to extend their right arm, with the palm facing up. We comply, like a confused Hitler Youth. He then tells us to extend our left arm with palm facing down. We are then told to cross our palms in a scissor motion and bang them together when both palms cross each other.

‘In America, we call that a clap and I want you to do it whenever you hear something you agree with,’ he says. I’ve now got him pegged as a complete c***. We had Adam Ant last week!  What the f**k is this about?

Over the next half hour we are given a very animated lecture about the sins of teenage sex, drinking liquor, and smoking. The second red neck looks like a 70’s David Cassidy. Tumbling blonde locks below his cow boy hat and he is introduced to us as Rick Presley. It carries on as before but from a more personal angle. Apparently his brother had it all but lost touch with God and the good Lord took him. I am looking forward to double maths with the paedo by now. It was that bad.

Scroll on 3 hours and I am spending my lunch money in exactly the way my mother would ground me for. I am in the park, opposite my school and eating chips from a bag, just before I buy a Benson and Hedges separate from the corner shop.

Who should roll up, but Butch and Sun dance. We eat chips together and they continue their fake bonhomie and preaching. Everyone is gobbing in their chips and offering them, but I was kind of struck by Rick Presley talking about his brother who had died.

‘What did your brother do?’ I asked.

‘He sang rock n roll.’ Said Rick.

‘Do you want a chip?’ I said.

‘No, you just spat in them.’ said Rick.

The lunch hour went on and I nodded like a dog to all he said. Marriage is sacred. Drugs are bad. Alcohol is Satan’s semen being forced into your mouth.

‘Do you want a chip?’

It was many years later that I met Jimmy Velvet. Jimmy was an old Jim Reeves style crooner in the 50’s but a very sharp operator who had somehow ended up as part of Elvis Presley’s inner circle. They were known as The Memphis Mafia. As I came to see in time, many of Elvis Presley’s people  got very  religious in the years after his death and Jimmy put me right about Rick.

Elvis’s dad was Vernon.  He and Gladys split up when Elv’ was very young and Vern went on to have another wife and another family. Rick Presley was Vern’s son by his second marriage. He was three years younger than Elvis Presley.

Rick was one of Elvis’s flunky Mafia guys. Vernon, his dad was his financial advisor. (work that out?) and since Elvis died, Rick, like many had become righteous in thinking he had to steer people away from what killed his step brother.

I met many of the so called Memphis Mafia and they were all as fucked up as their boss. Back pedalling in the hope of some last gasp redemption for their ways.

Jimmy Velvet visited me in London and told me he had Elv’s last gig on a reel to reel in his bag. I took him to lunch and had someone steal the tape and copy it, then put it back in his case. I have Elvis Presley’s last ever gig on a CD. He sings like an angel but he is so sad and pathetic between the songs. ‘Does anyone know what we’re doing here?’’ ‘Ma belly’s so big, ma belt’s fallen off.’

Every time I hear Kirsty McColl, I think of that day.

There really was a guy down the chip shop who really was Elvis’s brother.