“I am the new Elvis,” declares Paul Oakenfold, the superstar DJ, as he drops his mix of the Presley single, Rubberneckin’, onto the decks in Ibiza. “I’m certainly not as good-looking as him, and I can’t sing — but who cares?”

He’s wrong, of course (though not about the looks, or the singing), because if anyone could be said to be the new Elvis, well, it’s the King himself. Twenty-six years after his ignominious death on the seat of a toilet, Elvis is cooler than ever. When a phone company managed to tempt Kate Moss into revealing who she would most like a one-to-one with, the coolest girl in Britain replied it would be Elvis. And when JXL, the Dutch producer, released his version of A Little Less Conversation last year, it went straight to the top of the charts. Presley’s look — rockabilly biker jackets, gold lamé suits, quiffs and ’burns — is inspiring a new intake of rock bands, and the album compilation, Elvis: 30 #1 Hits, released last year, sold more than 10m copies worldwide, earning his record label a mighty $140m in the process. Unable to believe its luck, Elvis Presley Enterprises is about to release a new hits album, Elvis: 2nd to None, and have allowed Oakenfold only the second-ever licence (after JXL) to work his magic on the 1969 B-side, Rubberneckin’. The result is a bootylicious, dancefloor stomp.

So what’s the everlasting appeal of the boy from Memphis? Yes, it’s in that irresistible voice and those groovy, funky, foot-stomping numbers, but it is also the man himself. After all — and mind the voice and the pelvis — it was Elvis who minted many of the staples of modern celebrity behaviour. He was the first to scandalise society in a truly mass cultural way, he was the first to have a posse, the first to seriously bling, the first, for God’s sake, to get it horribly, spectacularly wrong, and to come back so spectacularly well.

As Becks ponces around Madrid struggling with the language (and that’s before he’s even started on Spanish), or Puff parks up his yacht for yet another party; as Sir Elton strips the shelves of Theo Fennell bare, and the Bennifer bandwagon rolls on, the ultimate King of Bling is being restored to his throne, and will once again look down on the pretenders and curl his peerless lips.

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You see, Elvis hasn’t always been cool. At one time, he was in a place far, far away, beyond the reach of taste and credibility. Elvis, you see, got camp. Or rather, camp got Elvis. Impersonators sullied end-of-pier shows with poor imitations; bands of Chinese Elvis lookalikes kept his name alive, and the Sunday Sport put him on the front page almost every week — shopping in Tesco, working as Father Christmas in Harrods, holding hands with the little green men.

With Elvis, the line between success and failure, cool and naff, is wafer-thin, as his own life proved on many occasions. It’s a tightrope that those who emulate him must walk, too, and even the most fashion-conscious can get it wrong. Who didn’t look at that photo of David Beckham, head to toe in black leather, and think, puh-lease? After all, Elvis cut a far dashier dash in 1968 in the same get-up for his comeback television special.

Kitsch and karaoke still have their claws in his back catalogue, and won’t give up without a fight. Nor, it should be said, will the pompous purists or the anxious anoraks, aghast at what’s being done to their idol by Oakenfold, a mere DJ and the man who, shudder, wrote the theme tune for Big Brother. But the truth is, Oakey has spruced up an indifferent, unloved old Presley throwaway, given it a shot of the hard stuff, and will very likely deliver Elvis yet another No 1. The new generation of record buyers, rock stars and fashion hounds cottoning on to Elvis will see the truth for what it is: he is, indisputably, the King.

Elvis Presley’s Rubberneckin’, remixed by Paul Oakenfold, is out on September 22 on RCA Records

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