York's own Elvis, Eddie Vee, has checked out of heartbreak hotel after TV host Vanessa Feltz turned out to be his good luck charm.

When the Presley impersonator appeared on The Vanessa Show last month, he impressed an agent for Mainfeature Records.

As a result, Eddie has cut his first professional single, Face The World Again.

"It's an Elvis tribute song," said Eddie, of Wenham Road, York. "It's what I might have told Elvis if I'd been close to him when Priscilla left him."

Eddie wrote it, friend Graham Metcalfe arranged it and they recorded it in four days.

Now it on the Internet (websitewww.musicom.co.uk).

He performs it in public for the first time tomorrow night at the Grey Horse, Kelfield, near Selby.

see COMMENT 'Good luck, Elvis'

You've been conned... by telly tricksters

As further revelations of fake guests today rocked TV talk shows, CHRIS TITLEY spotlights broadcasters who sacrificed credibility in their lust for ratings

Don't believe what you read in the newspapers, people used to say. But these days the warning should be: don't believe what you see on TV. Venerable broadcasters have been quick to sneer at the 'gutter press' for its habits of exaggeration and invention down the years. But now the tables have been turned. And the papers are delighted.

'Vanessa Show Faked' screamed The Mirror's headline yesterday. The report alleged that guests on BBC1's flagship daytime programme, hosted by the ebullient Vanessa Feltz, were not as they seemed.

One woman told the show she was a battered wife. Two others posed as sisters involved in a lifelong feud. The Mirror claimed that all three were supplied by a London entertainment agency.

'Savannah Davies, the battered wife' later confessed to being unmarried Angelina Candler. Far from being sparring sisters, the two so-called siblings were actually strippergrams. Each earned £75 for their performance.

Auntie Beeb had a fainting fit. "The BBC and Vanessa Feltz are absolutely horrified by these allegations," a spokesman gasped. An urgent inquiry is under way.

If the claims prove to be true, The Vanessa Show will not be the first to have staged spontaneity.

Daytime TV 'confessional' shows have an insatiable appetite for the weird and the not-so-wonderful. America, where this whole this tacky business was born, has a production line of trailer park oddballs seemingly desperate to telling the world about their tangled love lives.

The king of this format is Cincinnati ex-mayor Jerry Springer. But even his show has had to stoop to fakery to maintain the schlock horror levels.

Last year it was revealed that 16 guests had been coached on exactly what to say and do. They claimed the fights which often break out are practised so they look genuine. Some even said they were told to tell outright lies.

One guest, who appeared as a bodybuilder, and was seen brawling with his brother says: "We acted everything. They wanted us to wrestle and throw each other around. They said 'We want four fights'."

Another guest, a model called Kelly, says: "I was supposed to be with someone for two and a half years and I was cheating on him with my photographer.

"I didn't even know the two guys." Such revelations have led daytime TV diva Oprah Winfrey to announce her decision to quit her pioneering show.

"Can public taste keep on sinking? Yes it can," she said. "We will see sexual intercourse on television - and I would not be surprised if one person actually killed another."Desperation for ratings fuel such stunts. The Vanessa Show is certainly in need of an audience boost: despite being brought in as BBC Daytime's great pink hope, at a rumoured cost of £2 million, Vanessa's viewer figures have been very disappointing.

One man who has seen the Vanessa Show from the inside is York's Elvis impersonator, the totally genuine Eddie Vee (real name: Graham Cambridge).

He was booked to sing on what would have been Elvis's 65th birthday last month, accompanied by wife Jane.

Eddie was not involved in any TV fakery. Even his quiff is real, if dyed. But he did experience some subtle manipulation by the show's production team.

Before he and Jane appeared, the couple were contacted by researchers. "They asked Jane, 'do you like Elvis? Do you like your husband being Elvis?'" Eddie recalled.

"She said no. They thought that was a great angle to work from."

During rehearsals early on the morning of transmission, Vanessa interviewed them.

"When we came out to do the show, the questions she asked were completely different.

"They were a lot more sharply weighted against me - she asked Jane 'what's it like living with this total madman?'"

Eddie believes the appearance could have been a disaster for him. But his rendition of The Wonder Of You won the audience over to his side.

And he fiercely defended the show's star, a regular target of the tabloid press.

"They said the crew called Vanessa names behind her back.

"That's a load of rubbish. All the crew and the researchers had nothing but admiration for Vanessa. They said she was nicknamed the Dalek because she has difficulty getting upstairs. That's a load of rubbish. It was a real team production.

"No one had time to call each other nicknames."

TV show researchers are not always fortunate enough to come across guests as straightforward as Eddie.

Their frantic search for suitable box fodder is helped (or hindered) by members of the public whose one desire is to show off on telly.

And they can be very devious when it comes to achieving their ambition.

Hoaxer Dave Smith embarrassed the Kilroy show when he owned up to appearing on it no less than five times. He had posed as a ruthless loan shark, a man who tortured a burglar in his own home, a vigilante and a lottery winner.

Yorkshire wannabe actor Victoria Greetham made a name for herself by fooling the producers of a Channel 4 documentary.

Miss Greetham was filmed over four months by the Cutting Edge team for a programme about girls who were unusually close to their fathers. Only 24 hours before the show was due to be screened, her real father came forward and exposed her scam.

The man posing as dad in the documentary was actually her fianc, and was only ten years her senior.

"Everyone wants to be on television and I didn't want to pass up the chance," she explained. And eventually she was on TV - in a Cutting Edge documentary about the con.

Sometimes it is not the public but the broadcasters themselves that are behind the swindle.

Then it becomes more serious. Channel 4 has admitted that scenes in two other Cutting Edge programmes, Rogue Males and Too Much Too Young, about rent boys, were staged.

But the worst recent example is the Central TV documentary The Connection.

This purported to expose a new heroin route between Columbia and Britain. That was made up, as was an interview supposedly with the number three in a major drugs cartel, and scenes meant to show a drugs 'mule' smuggling heroin into this country.

Central's owner Carlton was fined £2 million by the Independent Television Commission for "a wholesale breach of trust between programme makers and viewers."

Still believe everything you see on the box?

see COMMENT 'Fake television shames nation'

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