Elvis as you've never seen him before - from Leighton Buzzard author Robert Wells
A Leighton Buzzard author who turned his hand to writing books during the pandemic has published his third book – detailing the fictional adventures of Elvis.
As a lifelong Elvis fan, Robert Wells decided the King of Rock and Roll would make a suitable subject.
Not surprisingly, Elvis the Astronaut is not a factual account. It’s 12 short stories that are funny and fictional, based on the real people who surrounded Presley.
The title piece tells, tongue in cheek, how the late best-selling singer blasts off in a rocket from Cape Canaveral to perform the first show from outer space. But it all goes spectacularly wrong and he splashes down somewhere in the South Seas.
This is followed by Bruce ‘The Boss’ Springsteen fleeing for his life from Graceland and 100 people, dressed as chickens, causing a riot at an Elvis concert.
Robert – who’s also penned Elvis: The Siege of Graceland and Other Stories and Elvis & A Royal Visit – claims it was going to Graceland with his partner Jan in 2015 that made him want to commemorate his hero in these unusual vignettes.
He explains: “Elvis’ life is often portrayed as a tragedy, but I have turned it into comedy.
"The people who surrounded him were family and friends he’d known since he was dirt poor, before he became famous, and that was important to him – people like his manager, Colonel Parker, his father Vernon, his cousins Red and Sonny West and the Memphis Mafia, including Charlie Hodge and Lamar Fike.
"What I’ve done is exaggerate certain character traits to make them even funnier than they were in real life.
"I’ve written so much about them that they’re like family to me.”
Walsall-born Robert left school to work on the Wolverhampton Star, then joined the Western Gazette group before taking on projects at The Times and Reuters.
He started his own corporate communications business with high profile clients like BT, Sony, Toyota and National Express and won a national award for a magazine he produced for NatWest Bank.
His next project is a collection of horror stories based in and around Leighton Buzzard.
He says: “I’ve always been open-minded about ghosts and there have been several instances in my life when something inexplicable has occurred that can only be put down to the supernatural.”
As with Elvis, all the stories in his new work are fictional with the exception of one about a poltergeist, witnessed by two of his friends in their home.
There are 13 stories in the new book – a suitably spooky number.
The father-of-two and his family moved to Leighton in 1981.
He says: “We liked the look of it – a smallish market town with a good commute to central London.”
He’s been with his partner Jan, local organiser of the Leighton Buzzard National Women’s Register, for almost 20 years.
He says what they like about the town is “the wonderful friends we’ve made and the quality of the countryside in Bedfordshire which people don’t often appreciate.”
> Elvis the Astronaut is published by New Generation Publishing, price £10.99. Robert also has a Facebook page called Elvis author Robert Wells with a picture of him at the Music Gates in Graceland.