on our patch ATHENA PICTURE AGENCY ZING LIMITED / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
The wonder of Presley
Ruth Addicott gets all shook up about the world’s biggest Elvis festival – in south Wales
W
hen the Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl was facing closure in 2004, former PR man Peter Phillips came up with the idea of an award show for Elvis tribute artists. The event attracted 500 people and took off
in a way the town never expected. It now attracts 40,000 and is the biggest Elvis festival in the world. The quiet seaside town of Porthcawl in south Wales is a world
away from the bright lights of Las Vegas, but for one weekend every year, it is inundated. The streets come alive with black and white leather jumpsuits emblazoned with rhinestones and the King’s back catalogue is belted out from every corner. As surreal as it is, the three-day event brings in an
estimated £5 million to the local economy and was named by Time Out as one of the 40 best things to do in the world. It has always generated coverage in local press, but for
journalists, photographers and filmmakers who can see beyond the wigs and sideburns, the real story had yet to be told. Robin Toyne, filmmaker and director of the BBC documentary Mad About Elvis first found out about the festival in 2014 when a security guard at BBC Wales told him he should do a film about it.
‘A completely joyous event’
Christina Macaulay, former BBC commissioning editor, who backed the Mad About Elvis film, says: “I knew it would pull an audience. The person behind the festival
20 | theJournalist
was a great character for TV. What I didn’t expect was such a layered film. Every person had a back story. It is a also a completely joyous event.”
Don’t be cruel Freelance journalist Robbie Griffiths says: “I made sure I was aware of the bullet points of Elvis’s life because I knew there would be real
“What intrigued me was that it was so incongruous that the biggest Elvis festival in the world happened to take place in Porthcawl in south Wales, which had absolutely no connection with Elvis,” says Toyne. He could see its potential – the challenge was getting a commission. Toyne began doing research, speaking to Elvis impersonators and festival organiser Peter Phillips. And the more he spoke to people, the more convinced he became that there was potential for a broader film. He filmed a taster featuring tribute act Darren Graceland Jones transforming himself from a ‘short bald Welshman’ – as he described himself – into Elvis. Jones confided openly about his anxieties and the mask of Elvis. The film also showed him performing in a care home to people with dementia, as part of his philosophy of ‘doing good things in the name of Elvis’. Toyne pitched to numerous commissioning editors,
including the BBC and Channel 4, but there was no interest. Then, in August 2017, he received a call from a commissioning editor at BBC Wales, who felt it could be a good fit for the BBC Our Lives series. It was three weeks before the festival was due to start and the BBC had not made a decision. The clock was ticking. So Toyne sent an email, saying: ‘It’s now or never.’ He got the go-ahead and Mad About Elvis was made. “I think it was the first time a full-blown television documentary had been made on it, which surprised me,” he
Elvis aficionados. I wanted people to speak to me and know I wasn’t there to mock them but to understand it.”
Stuck on you Filmmaker Robin Toyne’s advice is don’t give up: “Trust your instincts and if, an idea
doesn’t get commissioned, look for alternatives, whether that’s a different commissioner or a different way of making it. It doesn’t mean your instinct with the story is wrong. I always have at least 10 ideas out there for one to land.”
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