1. A Royal Visit

Aargh! cries Elvis. His face is the spitting image of the famous painting called The Scream as he looks down at the scales that tell him how much weight he has put on over Christmas.

That s ridiculous, he declares. They must be faulty. In truth, if they were one of those old-fashioned machines that speak your weight, they would have been struck dumb.

He is so disgusted that he picks them up and hurls them out of the bathroom window without having opened it first and stomps off to find another set.

Luckily the scales and the shower of fragments of glass miss his wife Priscilla who is walking back from the stables having been out for a ride. She is not unduly concerned by the incident; she steps over the debris and continues on her way. It s the sort of thing that happens every New Year s Day when Elvis checks his weight, is horrified by what he sees, destroys the scales, and ends up having to go on a very strict diet. She calls it the Great Annual Shrink.

Aargh! She hears another scream. Yes, she thinks to herself, he s realised the first set of scales didn t lie.

The only problem is that every year it gets that little bit harder to lose weight because he believes that once Christmas is over, the pounds will fall away naturally as he resumes his normal diet and his routine cycle of concert tours, shows at the International in Las Vegas, and making movies.

And there is some truth in what he says, but how much easier would it be to diet, and how much healthier would he be, if he didn t eat such huge meals in which almost everything is deep fried. Fresh green vegetables and salads are anathema to Elvis who has even got his grandmother Minnie Mae to start making him deep-fried chocolate bars, so