Watch an exclusive extract of Sanjeev Bhaskar's TCM Elvis documentary

I have never sought out any kind of connection between the boy from Memphis, Tennessee, and the boy from Hounslow, Middlesex. But they appeared anyway. I first encountered Elvis Presley when I was about 5 years old. Jailhouse Rock and Teddy Bear came calling to me from our family’s small solid-state transistor radio and I was transfixed. When I was about 10 I tried to tape the songs on an old piano-key mono tape recorder but had to live with the recordings being blighted by my mother telling me to “turn the radio down, your father’s trying to sleep” in the background.

I was 12 when I saw my first Elvis movie, Flaming Star, a western directed by Don Siegel (of Dirty Harry fame) with no musical numbers and no happy ending. Elvis plays Pacer, a half-breed who’s not accepted by Native Americans or the white man. I was enthralled. “So that’s what Elvis looks like,” I thought. “A dark-skinned boy with jet-black hair, who isn’t understood by Indians or English people – just like me.” Spooky.

And just a year later, after I had bought my first Elvis LP, Moody Blue, in the middle of the summer holidays, he died, with no warning and no apology for wrecking the rest of my summer. The radio stations on the day of August 17, 1977 were playing wall-to-wall Elvis and the joy and wonderment I felt at hearing so much of his back catalogue for the first time was tinged with the thought that we would not be hearing anything new from this man again.

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I realised early on that my weekly staple of the Bollywood films I saw as a child were effectively Elvis movies with a bit of James Bond thrown in. The clean-cut, handsome hero – a loveable rebel – woos the girls, beats up the bad guys, enjoys a couple of “humorous” escapades along the way and bursts into song without notice or anyone else batting an eyelid. And, let’s face it, Elvis loved bling, a passion for kitsch that I have only ever found among my Indian relatives. They would look at any of his spangled suits, knuckleduster rings and gold belts and think, “Now that is style.”

As an adult I discovered that Elvis had a passion for Monty Python. Furthermore he was a huge fan of Peter Sellers and particularly loved The Party, a movie I first watched when I was about 12 and thought I’d die laughing from. Sellers played an Indian character in it. This was now encroaching on my territory. He seemed to live in a big extended family with aunts, cousins and grandmother all living at Graceland, just like Indian families live. Elvis loved Reece’s peanut butter cups and banoffee pie. Ditto my friends.

Every fan of every icon projects a connection with their idol, looking for signs to justify their affections and to make that vicarious relationship special. A truly successful celebrity makes their fan feel like they are the only one that they are communicating with. Which rules out most of the so-called celebrities today, does it not?

Elvis did it on a scale that was unprecedented. For an artist that never toured outside America and without the benefit of the internet and downloads, he remains the most successful recording artist on record, with fan clubs and appreciation societies spanning the globe. I read with particular fascination the Indian registered fan-club website, full of mentions of “grandfathers” who write in every week to English language radio programmes, requesting Elvis songs and such titbits as “and Mr Mahesh Punwani from Colaba, who was lucky enough to see Elvis live in concert in the early 1970s. Yes it is true, Mr Punwani confirms, that at the end of an Elvis concert, everyone would break down and cry”.

So what about my obsession? Well, I have some limits. I have umpteen CDs, almost all the movies from the best ( King Creole, Jailhouse Rock, Elvis: That’s The Way It Is) to the worst (it’s a toss-up between about ten truly awful ones, but nonElvis fans might want to avoid Clambake and Harem Scarem, even if Elvis does wear a turban in it).

I’ve dressed up as Elvis three times for work ( Goodness Gracious Me, a film called Jumpand the Comic Relief single Spirit in the Sky). I’ve never been to a convention, never got to Graceland and own no Elvis memorabilia. I avoid Elvis impersonators because, well, they scare me. I recently had the utmost delight to meet Jerry Schilling, one of the “Memphis Mafia”, a consistent member of the inner circlewho has kept the memory of the King alive with honour and dignity. Jerry is an amazing guy in his own right, having made a name for himself as an editor and band manager outside of his Presley connections.

Through him, I got the biggest personal revelation of all. Elvis had a guru. An Indian guru. Before the Beatles and before flower power, Elvis’s interest in spirituality and attempting to self-realise led him to becoming a voracious reader. He read the Bible of course, but also the Koran, Hindu teachings and his favourite book, The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, a book of poems popular with the counter-culture in America in the 1960s.

Jerry believes that creative disappointment is what ultimately killed Elvis, at least spiritually and emotionally if not physically. Elvis wanted to do more, be more, but was hamstrung by management deals that kept him shackled to a treadmill that just did not let up. Now that’s sad.

So, am I aware of his darker, confused side? Absolutely, but what has drawn me back consistently over the years has been the voice. In his early recordings, you can clearly hear a life force unleashed, birth, freedom, evolution and revolution combined. In his later songs the searching tones of melancholy, a voice seemingly aware of its destiny.

Elvis’s greatest desire was to sing and bring people together, just as he had fused black and white musical styles in the late 1950s. Thirty years after his passing, one just has to glance at the fan clubs around the world to realise that he did just that.

Finally, my perfect Elvis moment. Some years back I was privileged to meet Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana, Elvis’s guitarist and drummer from his early fame days. My sister had managed to get me on an invitation list for a private gig they were performing in London.

It was exciting for me, naturally, but turned into a religious moment when one of the organisers asked if I would like to get up on stage and sing a number with them. Me? Singing an Elvis song backed by his original band? I turned it down. I’d rather have a perfect memory of being asked to be him than a memory of trying to be him and failing. Of course, looking back I should have sung Don’t Be Cruel in an Indian accent. I have a feeling the King might have approved.

— Jerry Schilling on Elvis at 8.30pm, interviewed by Sanjeev Baskhar. Sanjeev Bhaskar on Elvis at 10.50pm, both Aug 16, on TCM

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