Last Saturday night a party was held at the Police Officers' Club in Causeway Bay to raise funds for the CCCP. This is not, as you might suppose, connected to the Beijng Government; it stands for the Cat Colony Care Programme. The CCCP, which uses volunteers to monitor street felines, was set up by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in August 2000, and an essential part of the programme is the desexing of cats at the SPCA's Wan Chai headquarters. To raise funds for this project, the SPCA went into partnership with the International Elvis Presley Fan Club (Hong Kong) for last week's event.
You might expect that Elvis, who often insisted he was nothing but a hound dog, would have preferred a canine element to the evening (and what he might have thought of the desexing doesn't bear thinking about), but as Doris Fun Yiu-wai, the SPCA's marketing and communications senior manager, pointed out, 'Elvis' Chinese nickname means the King of the Cats so we think this is very appropriate.' At that moment, the band, which was rehearsing in the next room, struck up the opening chords of Don't Be Cruel and Fun gamely added, 'We're going to tell people 'Don't be cruel to the cats.''
Elvis, although not known as an animal lover, did have a pet monkey, according to Tommy Ooi, the Hong Kong fan club's president. Ooi, who insisted only a few months ago that he was standing down as president to concentrate on his import-export business, had just been re-elected for a fourth term the previous week having, like Elvis, to live with the burden of public expectation. Told that this was because he, too, is a one-off, Ooi, who was wearing a jacket inscribed 'Elvisly Yours', gave his trademark machine-gun cackle of a laugh, flashed the diamond set into his tooth (a canine, naturally), and cried, 'You are right! I am irreplaceable!'
Organising the party, which was supposed to be held last autumn, had not been without its problems, but the delay meant the evening could be conveniently tied in with Elvis' birthday on Friday. How old would the King have been? 'Sixty-five,' said Ooi, without hesitation. 'Oh my God! No, no, no - 69. He was born in 1935.' This added poignancy to the fact the night's entertainment was being provided by Elvis impersonator Justin Lim, 17, a student at Sha Tin College and a youth of such pleasant whole- someness that Elvis, even in his young and supple incarnation, would have looked raddled by comparison.
Meanwhile, as if by further contrast, Ooi had received a phone call that afternoon from Melvis Wong asking if he could join proceedings. Melvis is known in some circles as the Lan Kwai Fong Elvis - that being the patch where he has carved out a career singing, to use the verb loosely, in bars and clubs. It would be safe to say that a frisson of disapproval greets the mention of Melvis among true Presley fans, who find his rendition of the classics lacking in appropriate gravitas (the word 'clown' is often aired), but Ooi told Melvis he was welcome to attend.
At 7.30, just as the buffet was starting, Melvis, complete with aviator glasses, Hawaiian lei and red-and-gold jumpsuit, arrived and was placed at a table where he sat, frozen in time and space, a sidelined, side-burned ghost at the feast. The food was heavily carnivorous, the SPCA clearly having opted for the Elvis diet, which doesn't favour vegetarians. And, as if in further homage to the King's habits, there was also a bizarre beer-drinking competition halfway through the evening.