Estimates as to the number of Elvis Presley impersonators active in the world vary wildly, from around ten thousand all the way up to half a million. On Tyneside during the 1980s and 1990s, we had a unique Elvis tribute act of our very own in the shape of Joe Allen, aka Jarrow Elvis.
Joe Allen, pictured above in 1992, was a regular performer as Jarrow Elvis in pubs and clubs around Tyneside, singing his rather unique versions of Elvis Presley hits. It is often said that Britain loves an eccentric, and these off-key, out-of-time performances turned Allen, an unemployed shipyard worker, into a local celebrity.
I remember occasionally seeing him in the late 1980s at pubs in Jarrow and Hebburn. He would usually be given a big introduction by the evening’s compère. The audience members would clap, stamp their feet and chant “EL-VIS! EL-VIS!” as he took the stage. The cheers and applause would be vastly out of proportion to the quality of his singing. Seeing all this for the first time you would inevitably wonder “Is this some kind of piss-take?” and “Are they laughing with him or at him?” The answer to the first question was that Allen at least was deadly serious about his performing. The answer to the second question, to be fair, would have to be “a bit of both”.
An award-winning 1992 documentary by the BBC’s 40 Minutes team, titled Elvis in Jarrow, followed Allen and several other local performers as they sang at a popular Hebburn pub, the Victoria Park, located on Campbell Park Road opposite Hebburn Swimming Baths.
On Wednesdays and Sundays, the Victoria Park hosted the Jarrow Elvis Roadshow, featuring Allen and several other performers backed by a house band. The evenings were wildly popular, regularly bringing in over 300 people. In an on-screen interview, the manager of the pub states that the Roadshow evenings are the most popular nights of the week with customers, bringing in the bulk of the pub’s revenue.
The documentary questions whether the performers at the Roadshow, all of whom were mentally and/or physically disadvantaged to some degree, were being exploited by the pub’s management. Other than being given tokens that could be exchanged for drinks, the performers were not being paid for their performances.
The performers are shown clearly loving the Roadshow nights and taking them very seriously, practicing their songs and dance moves in advance of their performances. They enjoy the chance to shine, the attention and the sense of being local celebrities recognised around town. Yes, the audience members are laughing at the performers’ lack of real talent, but at the same time seem to view them affectionately and see it all as a bit of harmless fun.
The film crew interviews representatives of social services and disability charities, who are torn between not wanting the performers to be exploited while at the same time not wishing to deny them the freedom to do what they want to do.
The documentary also follows the off-stage lives of Allen and his wife Maureen as they try to resolve an issue with rent arrears for their council flat, a problem that could render them homeless. They are shown speaking with the manager of the Victoria Park, who says that he will speak with Social Services and try to sort their situation out. He finds out that Allen can earn £15 a week without affecting his eligibility for benefits, so ends up paying this amount against the rent arrears in return for his performances at the pub. It is also shown that the performers can come to the pub and have a free lunch, and that some of them do this every day.
Also featured in the documentary are segments on some of the other performers, including Geno Hannah, who is a housemate and caretaker for fellow performer Clive Rutter, who has chronic physical and mental health issues. They both say that without each other they would probably have to live in an institution, which they compare to being in jail.
Elvis in Jarrow presents the Victoria Park’s Jarrow Elvis Roadshow as the complex set of issues that it was, and does not provide any easy answers. In a contemporary interview with The Times, the documentary’s producer Nick Catliff expressed his own ambivalence towards the situation. “The club has made them celebrities and raised their self-esteem,” he said. “The exploitation is morally indefensible, but no one is offering them anything better.”
Shortly after the documentary aired, the Victoria Park changed ownership. The new management were less keen on the Jarrow Elvis roadshow and it was eventually dropped. Without an outlet, the performers faded back into obscurity.
In 2016, the Evening Chronicle published a nostalgic article “31 things you would only know if you grew up or live in Jarrow”, which mentioned seeing Jarrow Elvis performing at local pubs. This article prompted a number of readers to write in asking what had become of him. The paper was able to track Joe Allen down to his local pub and interview him. In the interview, Allen said that he had been retired from performing for many years and, since his wife passed away several years prior, he had been living quietly in Jarrow.
Joe Allen died in 2022 aged 86, and fans on several local online forums wrote afterwards about how he had made their day special by singing at their weddings and parties, or of the fun they had had going to the Roadshow or other performances over the years. There seemed to be a lot of genuine affection for Jarrow Elvis, which is a fitting tribute to a local celebrity.
It is difficult to remember Jarrow Elvis and his performances without also thinking of the points raised by 40 Minutes. The documentary raised some salient issues about how we as a society take care of our most vulnerable members. Re-watching the documentary 30-plus years later, I find myself asking “Should we have known better? Could we have done better?” Clearly, of course we should and could.
When I consider a further question “Would this be allowed to happen today?” the answer is a little more complex. While the Roadshow as depicted in 40 Minutes certainly would never fly today, it is worth considering that in more recent decades Jarrow Elvis and his contemporaries might have been enduring the ritual humiliation of TV reality talent shows like Britain’s Got Talent or X-Factor. These shows are arguably just as, if not more, exploitative than the Victoria Park’s Roadshow. In the present day, the performers would probably be posting their videos on TikTok, YouTube or some other social media platform, hoping for likes and positive comments, and possibly being ridiculed and hounded relentlessly by online trolls.
Here is the full documentary 40 Minutes: Elvis in Jarrow from YouTube. The video quality is not great as it is a transfer from someone’s VHS recording, but it gives a chance to see and hear the performances and interviews for yourself and to come to your own conclusions.
On a final personal note, somewhere around the time the documentary aired I wrote the song “Tonight He’ll Be a Star”, inspired by the documentary and also by reading some years earlier about another performer on that circuit named Les Stoker, aka Hebburn Cliff. He suffered from mental health issues like many of his peers, and eventually committed suicide. The song is my imagining of his story, as I did not know him personally. Here’s a very rough demo of the song by me and Don Goodeve, aka The Mystic Kitchens, recorded on a Walkman in a barn somewhere in Ireland in 1992:
Do you have any memories of Jarrow Elvis, the Roadshow or any of its performers? Do you know what became of any of the other people featured in the 40 Minutes documentary? If so, I’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch via the Comments (or the Contact Form if you want to send a private message) and help keep this little piece of Tyneside musical history alive.
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