Colonel

Alanna Nash's book was praised in hardback as the final word on one of the music business's most extraordinary and sinister figures. About the only indisputable thing about him was that he was Elvis Presley's manager. The Colonel was not a real colonel, shows Nash: he bought the title from a man in Louisiana, and was himself an army deserter, eventually discharged after being diagnosed a psychopath. He was actually a Dutchman, christened Andreas van Kujik, who may have come to America, illegally, to escape arrest for bludgeoning a woman to death. He behaved like a fairground barker in all his dealings with record companies and film studios because that's exactly what he was: a 'carny man'. Alanna Nash's book is more than a compulsive and fascinating read: it explains for the first time the odd trajectory of Elvis's career: Parker never booked him to tour Europe because of the dark secret that prevented him from going back there; but he did book Elvis, even at the height of his fame, into gruelling seasons in Las Vegas so that his own gambling debts there would never be called in. Throughout their partnership, Elvis took, as Parker put, '50 per cent of everything I earn.'