Tommy Steele: There is a Doctor in the house

TOMMY STEELE OBE had a secret. One he kept for half a century, until West End producer Bill Kenwright let it slip in an interview last month.

Then, the close friend of the veteran performer revealed that a 23-year-old Elvis Presley had visited Steele in London in 1958 – quashing the long held belief that the nearest The King had ever come to setting foot on British soil was the few minutes his plane spent on the tarmac at Prestwick Airport re-fuelling.

In an interview on Radio 2, Kenwright confirmed, "Elvis flew in for a day and Tommy showed him round London. He showed him the Houses of Parliament and spent the day with him."

Steele, who stops off at the Festival Theatre next Tuesday to star in a two-week run of Kenwright's production of Doctor Dolittle, was less than pleased by the revelation, saying, "It was two young men sharing the same love of their music. I swore never to divulge publicly what took place and I regret that it has found some way of getting into the light. I only hope he can forgive me."

The story, however, serves as a reminder that long before Steele became a musical theatre legend, he was Britain's first true rock 'n' roll star.

The singer was serving a short stint as a merchant seaman when he developed his love of music and discovered rock 'n'roll.

"I was lucky being on a ship with another sailor who knew how to play guitar and who taught me," he admits.

"Another stroke of luck was to be playing in a coffee bar in London singing a song called Blue Suede Shoes. I'd heard it in New York a few days previously. In the same coffee bar were members of the press who asked me what style of music it was and I said, 'Well it's called rock 'n' roll.' Before I knew it I was being billed as a rock 'n' roll star and my career as a singer took off."

Bermondsey-boy Steele (he was born Thomas William Hicks) was quickly snapped up by Decca Records and together with his band The Steelmen, reached No 13 in the UK charts with his 1956 debut single, Rock With The Caveman.

That same year he also scored his first No 1 with Singing The Blues. It made him a teen idol and household name overnight.

"The overnight sensation bit was true," he says. "It was the first time rock 'n' roll had ever been seen in Great Britain and because it was never seen before, you couldn't make any mistakes.

" It was all new, so the people in this country wanted to see more. No-one else played guitar – especially country guitar – except me."

A string of hits followed and by 1957 Steele had broken into movies via the eponymous biopic, The Tommy Steele Story.

The Duke Wore Jeans, Tommy The Toreador (from which he got his hit Little White Bull) Light Up The Sky and It's All Happening continued his celluloid success. By 1960, at the age of 21, Steele had began to leave the rock 'n' roll tag behind, concentrating more on his musical theatre career.

"I was just coming up to my 21st birthday and I did a panto – my first time on a musical stage, as it were. I was given show songs to sing and I was given steps to do. I loved it so much, I wanted to do some more," he recalls.

"That summer I was sent over to America to go and meet with Rogers & Hammerstein to talk to them about them doing a musical for me at The Colosseum in London, which was Cinderella, which was the greatest show ever seen in London in that idiom. That was how my career started as a musical performer."

Starring roles on stage and screen in Hans Anderson, Singing In The Rain, Half A Sixpence, The Happiest Millionaire and Finian's Rainbow cemented his reputation as an all-rounder – but as well as being a Hollywood heart-throb and rock 'n' roll icon, Steele has tried his hand at many things.

In his time he has been a composer, conductor, director and novelist. As a sculptor he crafted the popular Eleanor Rigby sculpture in Liverpool, and has seen his work exhibited at the Royal Academy.

"It's all the same thing. Singing songs, telling jokes, doing sculptures, it's all me saying to the public, 'What do you think?'" he says.

"You go into showbiz with an attitude to please. You have to. I'm a show-off and I was always like that in school. I was the class clown, telling jokes, making everyone laugh. I'd say almost everybody who ends up in this business has that same characteristic."

The last time Steele visited Edinburgh back in 2004 it was to star as Scrooge at the Playhouse. Dolittle is a very different character he reflects.

"Dolittle is the sort character I've not played, probably, since Hans Christian Anderson," he says. "He isn't a pompous stuffed shirt like he is in the film version, but he's still a crackpot who carries a bit of a punch.'

As in the hugely popular movie, Doctor Dolittle is a world-renowned veterinarian who has the ability to talk to the animals, as audiences discover when he sets off from his home in Puddleby-on-the- Marsh in search of the Great Pink Sea Snail.

'There are some wonderful effects and it's a song and dance man's dream to be in. There are some great numbers and it is the type of show that has Disney written all over it," he adds, referring to the Oscar-winning score which includes If I Could Talk To The Animals, I've Never Seen Anything Like It and My Friend The Doctor.

With a smile he promises, "It's suitable for everyone from eight to 80. It's a great story and a really cracking musical. Dolittle is an absolute nut-case.

"He's such an optimist that everything always ends up working out for him because he truly believes that it will. Is he like me? Yeah, he is a bit.

"He's a crackpot – and a great character to play because you come off stage afterwards thinking that anything can happen if you believe in it, and it makes the audience really happy."

And at 71 years of age, Steele is quick to respond when asked if he'll ever retire.

"Retire? You can't retire from showbiz, you get forgotten. I'll never stop. Never. I love it too much. I'll carry on forever. I've got a big ego, you know. I've got to feed it.

"I've had so many good shows and done so many wonderful things. I've been very lucky."

Despite his many years of experience, however, the entertainer confesses that even now he still gets nervous before going onstage.

"Every time," he admits. "The worst time is when you're standing in the wings waiting for your first cue and you can hear the audience, just before the orchestra strikes up for overture.

"It's at that time I'd be thrilled if someone tapped me on the shoulder and said there's no show tonight. Of course, when you hit the spotlight, that disappears and you're in the most wonderful place in the world. That happens every night and it is what I thrive on."

• Doctor Dolittle, Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, Tuesday-May 31, various times, £8.50-£30, 0131-529 6000

Dolittle doodlings
Doctor Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting. The character first saw light in the author's illustrated letters to children, written from the trenches during World War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull. Set in early Victorian England, Doctor Dolittle's friends include Tommy Stubbins, Matthew Mugg, the Cat's-Meat Man, Polynesia the parrot, Gub-Gub the pig, Jip the a dog, Dab-Dab the duck, Chee-Chee the monkey, Too-Too the owl, and the amazing Pushmi-pullyu.