Thursday, April 20, 2006

Elvis impersonators forced underground

Some billionaire has bought the rights to Elvis’s name and image, and it sounds like he’s going to try and stop ‘unauthorised’ impersonations of the King. But who's going to police it, that's what I want to know? Will he expect tax payers' money to be spent on sniffing out and apprehending anyone with a black quiff saying 'Uh huh huh,' or will he set up his own 'Elvisly yours' force of spies and enforcers?

There is a strange reversal afoot here. When you first arrive, and you have to go up to people and speak English and generally throw yourselves on their mercy, the locals are really friendly and go out of their way to help. On the other hand once you’ve been here a while and are starting to get to know their little ways and attempt a bit of Deutsche, your protestations that ‘no no Berliners really aren’t rude at all’ soon stop. In London, conversely, a throng of non-English speaking tourists blocking the entrance to the tube at Oxford Circus is liable to be treated to several of the choicest insults in the English language and at least one assault from a passing commuter. However, the longer you stay in the smoke the more you realise that if you avoid the tube at rush hour it’s actually not such an unfriendly place to be after all (though still not as good as the north, of course).

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