Meet ‘Elvis Presley’ and ‘Van Morrison’

Just mention ‘his’ name and you are sure to get a Little Less Conversation from her. The singer may have died a decade before she was born, but the 25-year-old Waterside woman, from Canterbury Park, is every bit as dedicated to ‘The King’ as the next generation up from her who experienced the Elvis phenomena in their own lifetime. She is every bit as devoted and she has a film and music collection that would be the pride of any true believer.

Her love of all-things-Elvis even prompted her to have his name tattooed on her spine, just below the neck, and she admits to being seriously in love with her vinyl hero.

But there’s more to Caroline’s Elvis addiction than meets the eye, for family get-togethers and parties Caroline dresses to impress in her rhinestone-encusted ladies Elvis jumpsuit, and was most recently seen at a family birthday party jamming with her Uncle William, from Kilfennan, who dressed up as Van Morrison. There aren’t many who can say they have had ‘The King’ and ‘The Man’ perform at their birthday party.

“Uncle William has the hat and glasses and coat, the whole lot, and when he does Van Morrison I have to do Elvis,” she says with a laugh.

“I have been fascinated by Elvis since I was about 15,” she said.

“I remember I was on holidays one year in Spain with the family and my dad is an Elvis fan and we went to a bar one evening to see an Elvis impersonator, Paul Thorpe. I saw the show and thought he was really good. There were so many good songs and I fell in love with Elvis. For me Elvis was the best looking man who ever lived, apart from my daddy, Trevor McKnight,” she said.

A frequent visitor to Scotland to see relatives and for the ‘Glasgow Touch’, Caroline also makes time to visit the Elvis Presley Fan Club, Elvis Central, while there. It is run by Paul Downie, and members band together to listen to The King and sing his songs all night long.

“I know a lot of the impersonators, but there are a couple of them that I really like and they are really good. There’s one from Dublin I like and another from Belfast,” she says, name dropping Ciarán Houlihan.

“Ciarán is the one who performs at the Millennium Forum. He won the European Elvis Championships there in January in Birmingham during the week of Elvis’s birthday. Now, I would like to go to the championships,” she said.

“I have most of Elvis’s singles, all his films, everything like that,” she said.

Unperturbed by what others in her age group think of her Burning Love, Caroline says at this stage she is used to people looking at her askance: “Sometimes people are like ‘What are you doing with a tattoo of Elvis?’ but at this stage I’m like, ‘whatever’.”