It's time to re-write the musical history books, folks - Elvis Presley did visit England. It has always been thought that his only stopover in the UK was a brief landing for his plane to refuel at Prestwich Airport in Scotland in 1960. However, theatre producer Bill Kenwright let slip in an interview for BBC Radio 2 that The King once came to London for a sightseeing tour with fellow singer Tommy Steele (who was then billed as the "British Elvis").
Speaking on Ken Bruce's 'Tracks Of My Years', Kenwright revealed that the trip took place in 1958, when Elvis was 23, and the two singers, with Presley's then soon-to-be-wife Priscilla, took in the Houses Of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. "It's quite something, isn't it - the thought of them wandering around London together", he later told the Daily Mail. "But the impression I got was that they never got out of the car. It was more like, 'There's Buckingham Palace... there's the Houses of Parliament'".
Asked to confirm the meeting, Steele, now 71, said "What actually happened many years ago is something secret and memorable. It was an event shared by two young men sharing the same love of their music and the same thrill of achieving something unimaginable. I swore never to divulge publicly what took place and I regret that it has found some way of 'getting into the light'. I can only hope [Elvis] can forgive me".