RONALD McDonald and Mickey Mouse eat your hearts out - neither of you is the world's most recognisable icon of all time.

RONALD McDonald and Mickey Mouse eat your hearts out - neither of you is the world's most recognisable icon of all time. Author Charlie Connelly knows the truth, after a global odyssey of quirkiness showed Elvis Presley being honoured and celebrated in some strange and wonderful ways.

At Porthcawl's Elvis festival, for instance, he saw enough impersonators to last a lifetime - and also had a couple of middle-aged devotees showing him pictures of their fridges adorned in Elvis memorabilia.

Across the Atlantic in Montreal - where in 1957 the Quebec Catholic Church announced that any Catholic attending Presley's planned concert would be immediately excommunicated, and city politicians blocked the show - Charlie met Dan Hartal. The former music therapist is better known as Schmelvis: the world's leading Jewish Elvis impersonator.

(Little-known fact: Presley's great-great-grandmother was Jewish.)

“He's one of my favourites,” says the author. “His records are really good, as well, and he changes the words to give them a Jewish slant. So Heartbreak Hotel becomes Jerusalem Hotel, 'down at the end of Jaffa Street.' He was fun.”

But his favourite - the blue whale in this sea of strangeness - is Dr Jukka Ammondt. This Finnish professor of literature and linguistics - a short man with long grey hair and little round glasses - makes no attempt to impersonate Elvis. He simply happens to sing the legend's songs . . . in Latin.

“When you hear of it, you think it's going to be a one-song gag, but I've got a couple of his CDs and they're really good!” enthuses Charlie.

“He also did a three-track EP in ancient Sumerian” - spoken in Southern Mesopotamia, today's southeastern Iraq, between about 4000BC and 2000BC - “though only one was an Elvis song: Blue Suede Shoes.

“When you hear it, it takes a while to recognise it because he's been very adherent to the original Sumerian. Although no-one had ever heard Sumerian music, they studied pictures of instruments from old tablets and what have you and worked out what it would have sounded like.

“This thing grinds along and suddenly you hear Dr Ammondt booming in in this low, guttural voice. It's only when it gets to a certain chord progression that you realise it's Blue Suede Shoes. But I really like it as a piece of music and it stands on its own.

“He did tell me that, obviously, the Sumer didn't have blue suede shoes, so he had to change the lyrics a little. When he translated it into Sumerian he had to say something like 'On my sandals of sky-blue leather please don't stand.' It doesn't scan quite as well as the original . . .

“If you made it up, no-one would believe you.”

The tales can be found in Charlie's seventh book, In Search of Elvis, which follows his acclaimed tome Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast. He's also presented reports on the Holiday programme and most recently has contributed to Traveller's Tree on Radio 4.

His idea for a journey to find the man beneath the jumpsuit, and write a book about it, was born over a fry-up with a professional musician friend in London's Star Cafe, just off Oxford Street. As they talk, a TV in the corner shows Elvis singing Lawdy Miss Clawdy as part of NBC's '68 Comeback Special.

Charlie's friend, Bap Kennedy, had become obsessed with the King, and it got the author thinking.

“The fact that Bap and I, two people from entirely different backgrounds who lead very different lives, both arrived back at Elvis despite some, ah, wilderness years and that we both have the same awestruck respect for a man who died three decades prior to our reunion over egg, bacon and sausage in a London cafe suggested to me that the Elvis phenomenon merited investigation.”

Charlie has vivid memories of the day Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, aged only 42. Charlie, then a couple of weeks away from his seventh birthday, remembers hearing it on the early evening news while he was sitting on the carpet, taking his Action Man to pieces. His mum was ploughing through a pile of ironing.

At that stage he knew nothing about the singer, but as he grew older his began to play his parents' tapes - including some accompanied by a pink booklet that gave brief details of Elvis's life.

Nearly 30 years on, and having travelled to the corners of the earth to meet obsessed admirers, does he feel he's found the definitive reason for the universal appeal of Elvis Presley?

“I don't know about definitive, but the music certainly stands up for itself. I think that's the most important thing. You could talk for hours about image, and the way people hold him in almost religious fervour, but when it comes down to it, it's all about the music.

“I like the early music - the Sun Records stuff. Listen to that now - it's recorded half a century ago - and it still sounds fresh and raw. It works.

“The music is what people hear. What brought that home to me was when I was in Uzbekistan, talking to this guy who's an Uzbek pop star and has opened an Elvis cafe in Jashkent. Because rock 'n' roll was banned in Soviet times, he didn't know who Elvis was until his friend's father, who was in the Soviet navy and used to travel a lot, brought back records.

“Karen Gafurdjanov and his friend would put these records on and it was just a name on a label. But this sound came out of the speakers like nothing they'd ever heard before and it changed his life - and that was with all the hype and everything stripped away.

“Also, he (Elvis) came around at the right time, I think. The mid-fifties were only 10 years after the second world war, so things were still pretty austere and for American kids the most controversial thing on the radio was Perry Como!

“All of a sudden, this kid comes out of Memphis swinging his hips, and with this primeval sound, and just woke something up in the world - and we're still feeling the reverberations now. There's been no-one like him before or since - and there never will be in terms of impact, because of the time he happened.”

The singer's charisma, and the power of his music, transcended all barriers: cultural, national, class, gender, age.

“There is just something about him: he is Everyman to everyone. A friend of mine says in the book that, when you look at his face, he could have come from anywhere: he could have been Indian, he could have been an Eskimo. He had his incredibly handsome face that crossed the boundaries. They way he looked, you couldn't pin him down to any particular time or place.”

Fans include the man who was until recently the prime minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi - “the one with the strange bouffant hairstyle. Visiting dignitaries would come over and he'd make them do all this karaoke with him in Tokyo!”

Did his research and travels, and his meetings with folk who had effectively committed their lives to worshipping the King, change Charlie's view of Elvis?

“It certainly improved my Elvis trivia knowledge! If you're in a pub quiz and there's an Elvis round, get me on the phone!

“Elvis himself is really hard to pin down. He's an enigmatic character anyway and he didn't give many interviews, and the ones he did give were usually bland and with no depth, so he rarely revealed anything about himself.

“I don't think anyone could really know more about Elvis the person than we already do - which isn't a lot, and which is strange considering how famous he is. When you speak to people who knew him, even they give conflicting views of his personality and character. He's almost a bit of a chameleon, maybe.”

As we approach the summer and the 30th anniversary of his passing, Elvis's face image will be everywhere. The author isn't worried about the inevitable outpouring of tat - within reach as he speaks is a coveted Elvis Presley birthplace snowstorm globe, showing the wooden shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he spent the first 13 years of his life.

Nor is Charlie overly-concerned about the inevitably dwelling, by some section of the media, on the singer's sad decline: the ballooning in weight and the addiction to prescription drugs.

“I think you can be negative about Elvis, but he will always endure. There's so much love for him among the fans. Even those who would poke fun at him would agree that I Just Can't Help Believing is a great song.

“It's unfortunate that the Elvis impersonators don't seem to help with that perception, because they all seem to choose the jumpsuit years - because they're usually fat blokes themselves and haven't got much choice! When you see some bloke who can't sing, what he's doing to a cheap nylon jumpsuit and with a terrible wig on, it's unfortunate that that's the image of Elvis that seems to endure.”

When all's said and done, though, nothing dents the force of the music and the personality of the man.

“Elvis is Elvis. He'll always have the love of his fans. You can always say 'So what?' when people criticise him - because he was the best.”

In Search of Elvis is published by Little, Brown at £12.99. ISBN 978-0-316-73055-6

IT will be something of a homecoming for Charlie Connelly when he travels to Colchester later this month (March) for a date at the Essex Book Festival. He was once a student at the University of Essex and has an aunt and uncle in the town, with whom he'll stay.

“I started off doing Russian studies, believe it or not. I learned Russian for a year, but I was no good at languages at all, so I ended up doing a degree in history.

“I've got a real soft spot for Colchester. I like all the history, with the Siege House and all the Roman heritage,” says the writer, who also confesses to having spent all his money in a second-hand record shop next to the Hippodrome during his university days.

“I lived in Wivenhoe for a couple of years when I was a student, and that's a really lovely place. Full of academics; someone told me they called it Sociology-on-Sea. Absolutely wasted on a student like me.”

For a long time an inhabitant of south London, he's now north of the Thames and enjoys writing in the relative luxury of a converted attic with views of Alexandra Palace.

His book inspired by the shipping forecast took him to Sealand, the independent principality established in 1967 in a former military fort six miles off Felixstowe. Charlie's got a coveted Sealand stamp in one of his old passports.

“I remember going to Harwich on a Sunday morning, meeting a complete stranger in a hotel, showing my passport and being taken out to Sealand. I'm still in touch with Prince Michael and email him and speak on the phone every now and again. I really liked the people.

“Hats off to them for carrying on for so long. A lot of people would have given up years ago. It's a classic British thing - almost like an Ealing comedy.”

Charlie's talk for Essex Book Festival starts at 8pm at Colchester Library on March 29. Box office: 01206 573948

Classical language, classic songs - Elvis hits in Latin, as translated by Dr Jukka Ammondt

All Shook Up: Nunc distrahur

Lawdy Miss Clawdy: Ai, nunc laudi sis claudia

It's Now or Never: Nunc hic aut numquam

Can't Help Falling in Love: Non adamare non possum

Teddy Bear: Ursus taddeus