or another. Shaky he took on face value - he found him interesting because he was a rock 'n' roller, and so was Adrian. During the late seventies the rock 'n' roll scene had diminished to such an extent that it was a positive joy to spend a night with a fellow soul. And Adrian was a professional photographer - he could fulfill a function going to Shakin' Stevens' gigs in London, taking pictures to use to sell.

Around the period of the contract signing with Track Records, Shaky was beginning to ask Adrian to handle some personal things for him - like his many parking tickets (Shaky didn't believe in the existence of double yellow lines) and one slightly more serious affair in the September of that year when he was pulled up for drunken driving. Adrian handled Shaky's defence, although it resulted in a one year driving ban. Shaky also brought his Track contract to Adrian for advice - it was a long, complicated document, which Adrian immediately handed over to his lawyer, Bryan Carter. Bryan went through the contract with Shaky as a "legal" favour for Adrian, who had been his friend and client for years. No fees changed hands, then or at any time.

When the Elvis show rehearsals began in late October, Shaky was almost dumbstruck with fear. He begged Adrian to go along with him on the first few days to keep him company, which he gladly agreed to do. He realised that the boy was quite out of his depth among the trendy West End theatricals, all greeting each other passionately and liberally peppering their conversation with the word "darling". He and Shaky kept as far apart from the madding crowd as they could those first few days, sitting at the back of the theatre when they weren't needed on stage. Then someone handed Shaky a script, with all the words of "Houndog" written out clearly. Of course, like the star whose life he was dramatising, Shaky was semi-literate - he'd never seen the words of "Houndog" written out before, although he'd sung them a thousand times. Adrian and Shaky went up to a room at the top of the elderly Astoria building and sat for hours, going through the words line by line - Adrian reading them out to Shaky, who would sing them back to him over and over until he'd learnt them. With the songs he was less familiar with, it was a long slow process.
Adrian was still convinced, though, that it was Shaky who was going to make the show, whatever his academic failings which didn't matter or show up on stage. On the fourth day, over breakfast, Adrian told Shaky that he wouldn't be able to come along to the theatre with him. "Sorry, but I've got to earn a crust, you know," he told his shocked guest. He drove Shaky to the Astoria, but didn't go in with him, that day - or again. Shaky survived, somehow.
And so, on November 28th 1977 the Elvis show opened. The trash press loved it, and so did the Elvis fans who crowded the theatre nightly and screamed as they'd never had the opportunity to do with the King but as Shaky had always wanted them to do for him. On the opening night the cameras clicked for the likes of Dee Harrington, who turned up in some entirely exclusive outfit made for the occasion, Shaky's wife, Carole, came too - it was the first time she'd come up to London to see her husband play. Shaky hadn't really wanted to invite her. "She won't want to come - why should she?" he told Adrian, with all the simple logic of an undisputed male chauvinist who'd been allowed to get away with it for too many years. Adrian wasn't having any of it, however. "Ring her up and invite her," he ordered. "It won't look right otherwise," hoping that his own simple logic would win. Shaky called Carole in the end, and Adrian offered to meet her in the Theatre foyer on the night and look after her through the show. Carole was obviously excited about coming - but her face fell as she walked into the Theatre, and saw that everyone there was dressed in gowns, fur coats, black dinner jackets and glittering jewellery while she had been told to come ''as she was" by her ever-thoughtful husband. Obviously swallowing tears of shame, she managed a little smile when Adrian told her, "It really doesn't matter - you look great in jeans anyway. Just play it cool and it will look as if you meant it!" what else could he say? He felt as embarrassed as she did, and not a little angry towards Shaky for being so callous. She went straight back to Cardiff after the show, packed into a taxi by Adrian at the end of the night. She returned for Christmas, though - complete with the two children Jason, then four, and the toddler Paula.

Shaky - without consulting Adrian first - simply invited them to spend Christmas with him. They stayed a month altogether. During this time Adrian was getting just 10 pounds per week to keep Shaky - soon after it was apparent that the boy had moved in indefinitely, he put it to him that as Shaky was getting free meals and accommodation as well as the benefit of heating, lighting and telephone, it might be a good idea to help a little with the housekeeping - just to the tune of 10 pounds per week.
He was aware that Shaky always resented paying this - he saw himself as a guest, although it hadn't taken him long to start treating the Owlett home as his own, including bringing friends back from the show at two in the morning for impromptu drinks. Adrian probably spent most of the rent on petrol, driving Shaky back from the theatre as often as he could manage it. Without his driving licence, Shaky was otherwise forced to catch a train home, which he hated - not only did he fear travelling so late at night, but he was also quite likely to find himself in a compartment with a few fans carrying Elvis balloons! Eventually Track Records stepped in with a car and a driver, until their demise, when Ray Cooney took over and provided his own man. Carole, slightly more sensitive than her husband, confided to Adrian during that Christmas period that Shaky had received a bonus of 400 pounds. "Ask him for something from that," she told Adrian - and he did try to broach the subject once, but it was to no avail. Even when Adrian's telephone bill soared up by as much as five times - from 50 pounds to 250 pounds, Shaky was as unhelpful as he could be, although he readily admitted that the rise was due to him - he called home quite frequently during his first few months in London. "Try asking Track for the money," he suggested. Adrian sent his bill to Track Records - but only a few weeks later they went under, in a sea of bills.

In the end, to save disconnection, he covered the bill himself - and then tactfully removed the phone from Shaky's bedroom - knowing that he could make calls from elsewhere if encouraged to do so. "What else could I do?" he asked. "It sounds mean, but I'm sure that in his own way Shaky understood why I did it." They enjoyed some laughs together, though. Adrian introduced Shaky to a whole new way of life - one that even his many years on the road hadn't taught him. Like coffee. It's a truism that people from Cardiff don't drink coffee - they drink tea. Tea in the morning, tea with lunch, tea in the afternoon and one before bedtime. Just like the adverts. Adrian, on the other hand, was and still is addicted to good coffee - he couldn't function in the morning without it. He had a large Expresso coffee machine in his kitchen, and the first thing he'd do each day before anything else would be to make himself several cups of dark, pure coffee. "My nectar," he'd exclaim. Shaky found the whole ritual a fascinating one, and watched carefully. Soon he, too, was drinking coffee in the morning. He'd pour Adrian a cup and, handing it to him would say "Here's your neptar, Adrian!" Shaky never did learn to say the word right. It's possible that years with noisy rock 'n' roll bands had affected Shaky's hearing in some way - people who've been with him on sound checks during recent tours are convinced of it, but while living with Adrian he definitely had some trouble with his pronunciation. New words, not already a part of his vocabulary, would take a while to learn -like "nectar". Other examples which both he and Adrian roared with laughter over were his total inability to say "cuI de sac" - Adrian's house is placed in one, although throughout his time living there, Shaky insisted on calling it a "culrysac". Likewise "cucumber" was "cookumbrum" - and when he decided to buy himself a car as much as a year later, he had the misfortune to fall in love with a Fiat Mirafiori - "Just call it a Fiat 131 ", laughed Adrian, after Shaky's several attempts to say it.

Another highlight of Adrian's week, which Shaky enthusiastically joined in on, was his Saturday lunchtime visit to the local pub - the Swan, where the landlord, by coincidence, was Graham Tyler, the ex-drummer of Rocky Sharpe and the Razors. The atmosphere for rock 'n roll fans was great - relaxed and friendly. A lot of good Shaky screams my eyes!.... :-)drinking times happened in that pub over the following months. Adrian liked food, too - there aren't many good restaurants he hasn't explored in and around London during the years he could afford it- and even during the years he couldn't. He introduced Shaky to an Italian restaurant in Hampton Court, which he told the boy was "probably the best around London - and I should know, I reckon I've eaten at all the others". They agreed to meet there after the Elvis show one night - Adrian had to ask the friendly proprietor who knew him to keep the restaurant open specially late for them, which he did, and Shaky loved it. The little establishment welcomed them with open arms, with a table beautifully laid out for them. Down the centre of the room were their fabulous hors d'oeuvres - green salads, ripe avocados, a selection of colourful food to feast the eye and tempt the spirit. Shaky gazed in fascination and delight at the array of food, and then, pointing to the biggest King Prawns you ever saw - they were probably Crawfish, clinging in delicate freshness to a large salad bowl, said "What are those things?" "That's King Prawn - would you like some?" enquired the manager.

Loading a huge plate with the pink monsters, he handed them to Shaky who went and sat at the nearest table. Adrian stood and chatted to the manager for a moment, ordering the food and thanking him for his hospitality. Suddenly they both heard a spluttering sound, and turning,... they saw Shaky coughing and spitting out bits of the prawn. "They're a bit crunchy, aren't they?" he finally said. When Adrian had finished laughing and explaining to Shaky how to eat them - "Like, you have to peel the skin off first, mate," he actually fell in love with them, and returned to the restaurant many times for more helpings of the same.
It wasn't that he was ignorant - just naive. Table manners didn't mean all that much to him - when the round of record company dinners began he would invariably cause minor confusion by grabbing the nearest roll to his plate, regardless if it was on the left or the right. At his first major dinner-reception, at which he was expected to go alone, he even had to have explained to him that meaning of the words "black tie" on the beautifully embossed invitation. "Er, can I borrow your black tie," he asked Adrian one day. "You see, I've got to go to this record company do and they seem to want everyone to wear a black tie." "They don't mean that - it's just an expression - a kind of shorthand they use, meaning they want you to wear a proper dinner suit," explained Adrian. Together they went to the local Moss Bros in Kingston and fitted Shaky out with a proper suit for the evening - a difficult task on a Saturday, which is traditionally the day for weddings -Moss Bros were almost out of suits of any description, but they managed to fit Shaky out to look reasonably presentable for the night - pinned up and tacked down. When Shaky eventually got to the Dorchester, he sat down at one of the beautifully laid tables, complete with first course of prawn cocktail at the ready - his favourite - so he picked up a spoon and started right in. Then he realised that he was the only one eating - everyone else was waiting for the welcoming speech from the managing director, sitting quietly drinking their martinis and trying not to glance in Shaky's direction.

Adrian worried a great deal about Shaky's drinking, for all their jocular times. He knew and understood the reason for any musician hitting the bottle while travelling on the road - you read the books, write the letters and then you drink the alcohol, of course. But Shaky stayed on the bottle all through the Elvis show - and he was drinking Scotch, which wasn't good for his humour. The first time Adrian became seriously worried about Shaky's drinking was on Christmas Eve - just a few weeks after the opening of the show. He'd gone to the Astoria to pick Shaky up and take him back to Walton, only to find him in the bar, shouting drunkenly at Des, the Fumble main-man. It was a repeat of the Rockin' Louie scene from eight years before. "You should quit this business," he was yelling belligerently with his finger poking Des's chest, "You just haven't got wha! it takes to be a star. You're useless -I'd give up if I were you." Adrian could see that Des was holding himself back as much as he could, realising in his slightly more sober state that if he punched Shaky now, it could be the end of the show for all of them. Adrian stepped I and literally pulled Shaky away, and took him home. Soon after this incident he had occasion himself to lose his patience with the drunken boy. It was another time that he had turned out late at night to chauffeur him back from the show - this time in his new car, a smart Audi. As soon as he got into the car, Shaky started to act stupidly - eventually kicking the dashboard with a drunken violence which appalled Adrian. Screeching the car to a hault in the Bayswater Road, he reached across the passenger seat, opened the door and said "Out! I'm not driving you anywhere if this is how you behave!" He left Shaky standing at the side of the road, dazed and angry, and drove home. The next day, instead of apologising for his behaviour, Shaky complained to him that it had taken him hours to get home, and cost him 10 pounds in taxis.

"Just think, Shaky," retorted Adrian, "that's how much rent you pay me in one week". One of the times that Shaky's self-obsessed, drunken behaviour got badly out of hand - in other words, when he directed it towards people who couldn't stand up to him or ignore him - was when the young Tim Whitnall dropped out for a while with the "flu and was replaced by a boy from the chorus - Billy Hartman. Billy was talented - he later went on to host the "Oh Boy" programs under the unlikely guise of "GBH". He went on stage this particular night and went down well - he got the girls screaming for him, sang well, and even introduced some of the young Elvis' movements into his performance.
After the show Jack Good clapped him on the back and said "Well done - if ever Timmy drops out for any reason - I'll know immediately who to get in to take over from him. You were wonderful!" Billy then received a summons from Shakin' Stevens' dressing room. Tripping lightly up the stairs, naively assuming that Shaky would want to add his congratulations to those of Jack, Billy knocked on the dressing room door. Shaky was in there, along with Adrian, who had come in to take him home. Shaky was drunk, Adrian could tell. He was upset that the girls had screamed at Billy - something he saw as his own accolade. The smile on Billy's face faded quickly as Shaky literally started shouting at him, saying, "Don't you ever do that again - you were imitating me out there!" "No I wasn't, " replied the perplexed Billy, "I was doing what I was asked to do, imitate Elvis." But Shaky wasn't listening. "Don't deny it - you were moving your legs like me and you were up on your toes!" "But - that's what Elvis did - I've watched it a thousand times in his movies!" wailed Billy, still totally out of his depth. "That's what I do," roared Shaky, by this time being physically restrained by Adrian, who then hurried Billy out of the room saying, "You can see he's drunk - don't let him upset you - you were great tonight. He's just really over- tired and emotional. Please try to understand, and forget about it." Adrian was to learn that Shaky had put Tim Whitnall through many similar scenes, often leaving the boy in tears at the end of what should otherwise have been a wonderful night.

In the April of 1978 Mike Hurst brought his family along to the Astoria to see the Elvis show. In the dressing room afterwards, he talked to Shaky. At the time, "Somebody Touched Me" was still available, although Track records had completed their nosedive.

"What's happening with your recording career, now that Track's gone?" he enquired. "Nothing," came the short reply. "Haven't you got a manager out there, negotiating another deal for you?" "No," again. Paul Barrett, meanwhile, was trying to clarify his management arrangement with Shaky, and set the record straight between them.

Shaky had visited him a few times after the start of the Elvis show, but it had upset Paul to see Shaky with his dyed black hair and made up eyes - even on a Sunday, when he was home for the day with his family. On one of these visits Shaky finally said that he had something for Paul - the business would at last be sorted out, Paul thought. But all Shaky eventually produced from his pocket was two balloons advertising the Elvis show, which he then proceeded to blow up. Paul finally decided to steer as clear of Shakin' Stevens as he could. The friendship which Shaky had called on so often to get favours and work - as he was now doing with Adrian - was over. Mike Hurst was interested, though - Shaky had a future, of that he was sure. He returned to his partner Chris Brough, with whom he ran a very successful company called Pebblebest, and together they made Shaky an offer of management. The deal was struck - they would take nothing from Shaky's Elvis salary - that had been negotiated by Paul- and they also didn't interest themselves in royalties from past recordings.