This Elvis doesn’t want to leave the building!

His all-night crooning – which can go on to 3am – left neighbours of his Yorkshire semi all shook up. Now, as he faces eviction, Bradford’s answer to The King cries . . .

ELVIS is in the . . .er, kitchen. So is Mrs Elvis. The cat is here, too. It’s a tiny kitchen so pretty cramped. The real Elvis, who was 6ft tall, would be colliding with the fridge if he attempted any of his signature moves in here. Thankfully, this Elvis impersonator, Dean Holland, is only 5ft 4in.

‘They call me Elf-is,’ he says, as he positions himself in the spotlight, aka the middle of the lino, just far enough from the toaster and the cat litter to allow for some Vegas-style lunges.

Ever been at an Elvis show in a Bradford kitchen? No, me neither, but it’s quite the event. ‘Intimate, isn’t it,’ says Dean, 45, when he finishes growling about being in the ghetto. ‘Fans love it because it’s up close and personal.’

He shows me where he likes to position his laptop during his kitchen shows, live-streaming the action all over the world.

‘I do an hour-long show. Just like I would at a wedding party or in a venue,’ he says. ‘But the joy about live-streaming is that the fans don’t have to be there. They can be in their own living rooms.’

Don’t Elvis fans in Ohio or Osaka mind the fact that you are quite clearly being All Shook Up in front of a domestic oven? (Frankly, it is a tad distracting, wondering if The King is going to whack his windmilling arm on the extractor hood). ‘No, because it’s all about the performance, not the backdrop,’ he says, being as earnest as a man in an Elvis suit can be.

In truth, Dean — one of Yorkshire’s finest Elvis impersonators — thought he’d found the Holy Grail when he discovered live-streaming. No more having to rely just on bookings from retirement homes in Halifax. Thanks to some techno-wizardry, he could plug his backing tracks in, link them up to the speakers and deliver the full Elvis experience at any time of the day or night.

Alas, that was his downfall. It quickly became clear that Dean’s most devoted fans were in the States, so he found himself live-streaming at 11pm, midnight, even — eek! — 3am. Lovely if you live in Memphis, Tennessee, perhaps, and fancy a sing-along. Less lovely if you live next door, in the adjoining semi, and are trying to get some kip.

Yes, his neighbours complained. The local authorities investigated and sided with the neighbours, much to Dean’s disgust.

The matter went all the way to court, where, this week, he and Mrs Elvis (known as Katie Mooney on the official court documents) were ordered to pay over £9,376 in fines and costs.

Council officials had previously secured a warrant to remove sound equipment from their home, meaning that Dean has been deprived of his amplifier, speakers and beloved jukebox. And it wasn’t just Elvis who was silenced. ‘ They even took the TVs,’ wails Katie. ‘ How did they expect me to watch Emmerdale?’

And the sorry saga continues. When I leave today, they are expecting another guest — not for a show but for a showdown. Unluckily for them, they live in a rented property and their landlady is none too chuffed to have tenants who have been found guilty of ‘statutory nuisance’.

‘We are being evicted,’ says Dean, as Katie despairs about what they are going to do with their lifesize Elvis cardboard cut- out, and their flashing Elvis sideboard. ‘The landlady is coming to give us four weeks’ notice. We have to be out and we have nowhere else to go. I can’t believe it. All because someone,’ he flicks his hand towards the shared wall, ‘doesn’t like Elvis.’

In a month, then, Elvis will truly have left the building, although he’s not going down without a fight. Dean can’t stop himself becoming homeless but he says there is no way he’s paying the court fines.

‘ It’s ridiculous. Where are we supposed to find that sort of money, especially since they’ve taken away my equipment, which is the only way of making that money? We’re going back to court to fight this.’

DEAN’Sobsession with Elvis began as a child. He would have been just three when Elvis died in 1977 but his father was a big Elvis fan and he remembers running upstairs with vinyl to play on his own little record player.

‘When I put anything by Elvis on, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. When I was a bit older I had a paper round, and one magazine did an Elvis special where you could collect a partwork. The shop owner would keep them all for me and give them to me with my wages. I’d live for that day.’

Dean had a good voice and became the karaoke king with his Elvis numbers when he grew up. One day a friend asked him to perform at his party and his Elvis tribute act was born.

While he has never been able to make a living from the work (it supplemented his wages when he was a salesman, then a satellite installer), it has been a huge part of his life. Elvis got him through a failed marriage, from which he has a teenage son, and many other life hurdles.

For the past decade he has travelled up and down the country playing for wedding parties and for elderly residents in retirement homes. The money is a bit rubbish, he says, but the payback comes in ‘all those smiles as you take to the stage’.

Four years ago, when he was working as a salesman, he met Katie, who was also a mad Elvis fan. ‘ He knocked on the door and I immediately saw the hair

and thought: “It’s Elvis,” ’ she remembers, as Dean smooths said quiff (yes, it’s dyed but the sideburns are all his own).

‘Then he told me he was an Elvis impersonator and did I want to come to see him in action?’

Did she ever! Katie, 33, is Dean’s No. 1 fan. ‘I daren’t touch him when he’s Elvis. He transforms. I’m left going: “Where’s Dean gone?” I get goosebumps.’ Why? ‘ Because he’s

Elvis, of course.’ It’s a complicated business being Elvis. Dean has three white suits, each one costing ‘a bloody fortune’.

He adds: ‘I have a tailor who makes them. You need to spend over £800 on each one to get it right. Once you start adding bling, the sky is the limit.’

His blingtastic belt cost £300 itself. ‘It’s a replica, but you need that. You can’t be Elvis without the belt. As soon as you put that on, you think: “Uh-huh.” ’

SOHE puts it on and uhhuhs his way around the living room and the kitchen while Katie shrieks and whoops. He can sing, no doubt about that, but it’s hard to strut convincingly in a living room which has a fish tank in it.

The suit is so tight it’s tricky for him to sit down. It’s also tricky keeping the thing clean.

‘It should be dry- cleaned after every performance, but I bung it in the washing machine in one of those net bags,’ says Katie, spilling some backstage secrets. Mostly, the stains are make-up. His own, and that of the women who tend to hurl themselves at him as soon as he is Elvis.

‘It happens,’ he admits.’ Never mind lipstick on the collar, you get their foundation all down the front where they hug you. Sometimes, especially when Katie isn’t there, they are a bit too tactile. I’ve had them grab my bits, which isn’t nice. If a man did that to a woman it would be assault. I have to say: “Stop it! I’m not an Action Man doll.” ’

The white suit might be a babemagnet but it’s a nightmare to get off after a show. ‘When you sweat it tends to stick,’ says Dean. ‘ Sometimes Katie has to get the talcum powder out to get me out of it. A few times I’ve been stuck in it. I’ve had to go to Tesco after a gig wearing it.’

Any complaints there? ‘Absolutely not,’ he says. ‘ People LOVE to see Elvis in Tesco. They come and ask for selfies. They tell you their favourite Elvis songs. Everyone loves Elvis. Well, nearly everyone.’

In his world, Elvis trumps everything. He has a telling story about a day he was striding past a stranger’s house and heard some Elvis wafting out the winby

dow. Did he think: “Blimey, that’s loud?” No, he did not. ‘I went up and banged on the door and talked to the guy, who invited me in.’

I think Dean genuinely feels that everyone is like him, and he insists that in previous houses, no neighbours ever had issues with his singing.

‘I’ve been in a situation before where I had a new speaker and was trying it out and someone has said: “Dean, can you keep it down a bit?” And I’ve said: “Sorry, sure.” But this? This is something else.’

The complaint to the council only appears to have involved one set of neighbours in the street. The trouble began, insists Dean, before he had sung his first note.

‘We moved in in February of this year. We were moving in all our furniture and boxes and she came out, shouting at the removal van driver, saying he couldn’t park the van on the street. He told her where to go, rightly so. Where else was he supposed to park? But that set the tone. We never really spoke after that.’

The pair insist that their neighbour, who has a son of around 11 or 12, never once complained to them directly about music matters.

But in May they were stunned to receive a call from an environmental health officer, informing them that there had been a complaint about music being played too loud, and that after investigations (‘I assume they measured how loud it actually was, but we don’t really know’), they were being served with a noise abatement order.

All councils have the power to implement such orders — which give the recipient a month to address the issues. Dean and Katie seem to have refused to play ball. They claim they attempted to, but were shut down by the lady from environmental health.

‘I don’t think she was much of an Elvis fan either,’ says Dean. ‘She came here and said: “Mr Holland, why do you need to rehearse in your kitchen? Why don’t you hire a recording studio?” At £60 an hour? What planet was she on?’

HESAYS he tried to negotiate. ‘ They never told me how loud I was. In venues I’ve played in in the past, they have a box on the wall that measures the decibels and the whole thing cuts out if you are too loud. I suggested I could get one of those. She said it wasn’t an option.’

The court papers point to five breaches of the noise abatement

order, meaning that even after Dean and Katie had been warned, they still refused to turn it down.

‘But some Elvis songs have to be belted out,’ argues Dean, putting a rousing version of Bridge Over Troubled Water (the Elvis version) on YouTube. Even without his speakers, the sound is quite loud. And the windows are open. At 3am this would be intolerable.

‘Yeah, but it’s not as if it was every night. The 3am thing really wasn’t that often, just a couple of times. But once they had it in for us, that was it.’

The adjoining neighbours politely refused to tell their side of the story for this piece. Some in the street have spoken out in Dean and Katie’s defence, though.

Noreen Aktar, their neighbour on the other side (not attached to the house), said that she has never had any problems with the noise. But even Dean and Katie’s own version suggests that this spat between neighbours turned nasty. Dean says: ‘After we got the order, we did come home one night when we’d had a bit much to drink and we did shout “grassing b******s” through the walls. Hands up to that. We shouldn’t have done it.

‘But the way I see it, the woman next door just had it in for us from day one and she wanted us out of this house, and now she’s going to get her way.’

Will Dean ever pipe down? Possibly not. The next step is to go back to court to appeal the fine. They are hoping that this time around the magistrates might be Elvis fans.

And if they are not? Well, nonpayment of a fine like this can eventually lead to a prison sentence. Luckily, Dean’s version of Jailhouse Rock is a belter.