Behind many great stars of stage and screen lurks a mysterious, sometimes sinister manager figure, minder or mastermind, whose precise role in their protégé’s life, especially in terms of creative input, may be hard to define. Richard Burton’s career was kick-started by the Welsh schoolmaster whose surname he took. Tommy Cooper’s affairs were handled for years by a character called Miff Ferrie who lived in Eaton Square. My fragile friend Michael Barrymore was frogmarched to precarious stardom by his amazing wife Cheryl. And even poor little Tom Thumb had the great P. T. Barnum to give him stature.
The man who managed or mismanaged Elvis Presley’s career was a particularly colourful example of this breed and his own life, recorded here with some affection, seems as peculiar as that of the godlike, God-forsaken young man he invented, ripped off and allowed to die at the age of 42.
Though lacking the bare-faced cheek of the nearly eponymous Colonel Barker, whose exposure as a woman thrilled English newspaper readers in the 1930s, Colonel Tom Parker was not short of secrets — or the braggadocio to cover them up. Most of his adult life he was able to conceal the fact that his real name was Andreas van Kuijik and that he had arrived in America as an illegal Dutch immigrant. He was also able to fool people that he was a colonel, when in fact he had ended his military service as a private, branded a psychopath by an army psychiatrist. ‘The Colonel’ may have sounded good but was only one up on his earlier nicknames ‘Popsy’ and ‘The Guv’. It is also possible, if not probable, that before leaving Holland for good our hero had bludgeoned a shopkeeper’s wife to death in his home town.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in