Elvis: how the legend lives on

IT'S a little disconcerting, to say the least. Sitting opposite me is a man wearing a white jumpsuit adorned with coloured baubles and with flares and a wing collar big enough to satisfy even the most ardent 70s devotee. He's wearing an oversize pair of sunglasses, and around his neck are two paper garlands. If it were not for the fact that his hair is too short and the sideburns are missing, this would be a very unnerving encounter indeed.

It's not just being, apparently, confronted by someone who ostensibly died 25 years ago, although there are still those who dispute that, but more that this bejewelled figure doesn't quite fit in with his surroundings - a striped sofa in the sitting room of a neat and compact modern detached house, instead of a mansion filled with exotic animal skins and gold door handles.

But then the man in front of me, who goes by the name of Jim Nunn when not performing, puts great importance on authenticity. The costume is an exact replica of the Eagle Suit worn in the 1973 Hawaiian concert, so called because the red, white and blue stones form the shape of eagles on the back, chest and sleeves. Exact apart from the fact that the stones are glass beads, and not gems, that is.

All Elvis' jumpsuits were given a nickname, so the King could ask for them by name, Jim explains. Apparently, the last one Elvis wore was christened the Pizza Suit, although this had less to do with the patterns and more to do with a certain weight problem.

Jim is very proud of the Eagle Suit, made by a friend of his wife, Linda. He says when he meets other Elvis impersonators, at Elvis conventions and the like, they're always asking where it came from. But nowadays it is generally kept in the loft, and has only been brought out for our photographer. As I have arrived just after the photographer left, he has kept it on, sunglasses and all.

After ten years of performing as 70s Elvis, Jim has decided to go back to 50s Elvis, when the music was more raw and the costumes less outlandish. This also explains the more subdued hairstyle and the lack of sideburns.

As well as being an Elvis impersonator, Jim, 44, who lives in Carrville just outside Durham, has been a fan for almost 40 years. He remembers vividly the moment he was captured by the Presley magic.

"I must have been about five and I was in a record shop in Chester-le-Street with my parents, and the shop was playing Return to Sender. For ages I was asking about this record I had heard called Return to Cindy, but no one had heard of it. It took until I was about six or seven before I got that record," he says.

"I was a staunch Elvis Presley fan from then on. It was the music - he didn't create rock and roll, but he was the first superstar of rock and roll and the sound was so unique, especially the early stuff."

Jim joined the official fan club when he was eight - number D2113 - and covered his bedroom walls with posters. He says people used to tell him he looked like Elvis, and as he grew older he discovered a talent for sounding like Elvis as well, but it was not until about ten years ago that he first performed as Elvis. Since then he has toured nationally with Elvis the Experience, appeared on television and recorded some of Elvis' hits. For seven years he was a professional impersonator, but he says the travelling proved too much and a few years ago gave it up, and now looks after people with severe learning difficulties for a living, although he still regularly performs as Elvis.

"I have been in rooms full of hundreds of Elvis Presleys, and I have met some very interesting characters. It has all been fun, although it was not fair on my wife and children," he says. Apparently, when hundreds of Elvises are gathered together, where they get their costumes from is one of the main topics of conversation, and the rivalry over who looks, and sounds, most like the King is intense.

Linda, 42, says she is not an Elvis fan, but the youngest of his two daughters, Rebecca, 13, has inherited her dad's passion for performing and is hoping to go to drama school. And for Jim, it is the performing as Elvis which gives him the greatest thrill. For the hour or so he is on stage, he is Elvis, and not just to the die-hard fans in the audience.

"When you are standing behind the curtain and the music starts to build up, you can hear the audience building up and then when the curtains open you have to be Presley. If you don't believe you are Elvis, then nobody else is going to believe it," he says. "When you are on stage there are all these screaming people wanting to touch you, and they want you to throw your scarf at them, like Elvis used to do. Some of them get very carried away. It is strange, but it is like a religion for some of them. I'm sure some of them think you're living in Graceland."

Jim vividly remembers the day Elvis died, August 16, 1977. "The newsreader looked into the camera and said: 'News has just come in that the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, has died of heart failure.' I turned it over and there was just a huge picture of Elvis, so I knew it was true," he says.

"I was absolutely devastated, there is no other word for it. It was almost as if I knew him, because I knew every single song and I had watched his films countless times. He was a phenomenon. To me, he can never be replaced. It is like something unique which has been broken: you can make replicas, but you can never recreate the original, the original has gone."

Before I leave, he gives me a CD of him singing some of Presley's classics. Listening to it that night, it's not quite Elvis, but by the time it gets to the third track - which happens to be a personal favourite, I Just Can't Help Believin' - it's pretty hard to tell the difference.

He says he will take the Eagle Suit off after I leave. Although he will never get rid of it, he says he doesn't perform in it any more. But as I get into my car outside his house, there is an unmistakable burst of song - Return to Sender - from within. Obviously, it was too much to resist.