I chanced across Toni Abela's repeat transmission of his programme Time Machine on Super One TV.
This programme was about Elvis Presley and even though I had watched the programme six days earlier, being the avid Elvis fan that I am, I couldn't help but watch the show again.
Two well known TV personalities made up the panel but the lesser one of the two was not much of an expert on the subject and quite a few times was caught unawares by some questions.
To classify Elvis as a country singer is absurd, to say the least, when only about a quarter of all the songs he sang and recorded could be termed as country. One other gaffe was when he commented about the way Elvis "struggled" when he sang Unchained Melody but conveniently omitted all his other great performances in the same show!
The "Tribute Artiste" who was a guest in the show left so much to be desired. We were told he placed among the first 10 out of some 10,000 Elvis Impersonators/Imitators without letting us know what position he placed in! (A total of 10,000 songs at three minutes each would add up to, if sung back to back, about 21 days!). One dreads to think what talent the other 9,990 contestants had!
Another guest tried to tell us things about Elvis but we got to know more about him and his visit to Graceland (Elvis's mansion) than anything else.
Things looked up a bit when the second guest singer, a true Elvis fan, spoke about Elvis and it is a pity he didn't sing his tribute song, aptly titled Elvis, Your Name Will Never Die.
The telephone interview with one of Elvis's pianists, Glenn D. Hardin, was perhaps what made the show as it was frank and revealing. One hopes that when Glenn visits Malta he will be interviewed again at length.
Finally, a word about the actor who played Elvis. Only the term tal-biki (pitiful) could describe his performance. Both the way he "acted" Elvis and, even more so, the way he sang his song... out of key and sometimes out of tune!
And a couple of words about the presenter. It is not an easy task to produce a programme about someone known the whole world over but had he knocked at some other doors he would, undoubtedly, have had a better end product. It would not have been too difficult a task to procure more detailed reports and news about Elvis, not to mention rare pictures, like the one reproduced here, which is said to be the last picture of Elvis alive. This was taken a couple of days before his untimely death when he was returning home with his daughter Lisa Marie after spending time at one of his favourite playgrounds.