...WHAT D' YA THINK YOU'RE GOING TO FIND UP THERE, EH? A NEW STRIKER FOR NEWCASTLE UNITED?




Peter Butler produced two homemade publications before self-exile in Denmark, Christmas 1983.

As well as Elvis, Pete was obsessed by Billy Fury, The Beatles (particularly John Lennon - John Ono Lennon as he referred to him on letter envelopes) and Cliff Richard as young British Elvis imitator. What Pete was most obsessed by was dead rock 'n' rollers. A morbid inspiration that drove some of his thinking and writing when down in the dumps.

The two stapled zines were a Billy Fury discography tribute, and hand-drawn entitled 'poems, thoughts and things'. Photocopying done at Adland, 32 High Street, South Norwood, London SE 25. A third zine, also with hand-drawn cover 'rough ideas ...and great works of my times ... a slice of my life' is dated 1984 and produced in Denmark.

Pete's girlfriend Lisa, later to become his wife, contributed drawings to 'poems, thoughts and things'. The text is typed on a manual typewriter. Peter's ode to Elvis Presley 'An American trilogy' is scanned here as visual.

"...UNTIL THE GOOD TIMES ROLL AROUND...YEAH..."





Partly inspired by another British television comedy drama series, this time Auf Weidersehen Pet from 1983 - Peter Butler took Norman Tebbit's advice, got 'on his bike', travelling by ferry to Denmark. In London he'd met a Danish girl and fallen in love. The young woman was named Lisa, forename of Elvis Presley's daughter.

Pete Butler, being Pete Butler, and an Elvis fanatic read into this personal coincidence absolute poetic romanticism. A cosmic gift from the King himself. For Pete, surely it must be the work of Elvis the King? In beat generation take on epic of Gilgamesh, a poet is writing young Brit into new script as likely lad construction worker character, breaking away in self-exile from Margaret Thatcher's UK. Trying his luck in Europe. Divinely guided by a Danish girlfriend with the same name as the King's daughter.

"BUTLER. I MIGHT HAVE GUESSED I'D FIND YOU BEHIND THAT."

Reading Peter Butler in UK workplace Seventies lends representational confusion to On the Buses tv sitcom character Butler. Butler, televisual workplace character, fed ontological factory girl Pete Butler.



In this youtube clip from 1990, Wogan interviews Reg Varney (Stan Butler) and retired cast 20 years on.

As Sir Terry retires from BBC Radio 2 today, the cover to Peter Butler's homemade zine from 1983 is scanned for online beat generation ballads sequence.

'...A WITTY SCIENCE FICTION PARODY...'

Factory girl Peter Butler collected 'The Elvis Presley Story' comic-strip serial in the Daily Mirror between Monday, September 12 and October 21 1977.

Years later he customized photo-copied bookwork from material treated with coloured felt-tip pens.

In storage, glossed ink from Elvis Lives! promotional sheet for 'Elvis Shrugged Graphic Novel - (a witty science fiction parody ...)' has impressed itself on plastic cover to Pete's homemade book.






from beat generation ballads sequence

beat generation ballads on youtube

Quality self-publisher Miss Dorothy Squires reads 'Happy Heart' at London Palladium 'Poetics of Linguistically Innovative Rendition' colloquium

beat generation ballads on youtube

Forty years on from their hit Eurovision 'links von mir' ditty, former German Democratic Republic's own Cliff and Livvy, Chris Doerk and Frank Schöbel, celebrate 20 years since bourgeois revolutions of Russia and Eastern Europe at 'Poetics of the Fall of European Stalinism' colloquium event

beat generation ballads on youtube

1968 Eurovision Song Contest with Chris Doerk and Frank Schöbel - East Germany's own Cliff and Olivia - performing singalong toon to London noughties poetry gig pub function-room hearers




Never mind, this video available for embedding but German YouTube visitors excluded. That's odd.