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Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
My night at Elvis Evolution — queues, laughter, but no burning love
The first sign that things might not be going well at the Elvis Evolution is literally a sign. It's a warning, right behind the ticket counter, that 'abuse will not be tolerated'. Over the next two-and-a-half very long hours, there are many more. The Elvis-based immersive theatre experience attracted significant attention when it was announced a year and a half ago. Andrew McGuinness, its creator and a former PR executive at Freuds, promised an experience that would be 'something like Abba Voyage'. What audiences, who have paid £75 to £300 for a ticket, discovered is something more like a YouTube video. • Fans demand refunds over cardboard cutouts at Elvis 'hologram' show On arrival at London's Excel Centre, the first thing you see is the traditional billboard of newspaper quotes. The Times described Elvis Evolution as 'the talk of the city', which is certainly true. Over the weekend, an angry pensioner had to be removed for shouting abuse during the finale and the performance was suspended. On closer inspection, the apparent verdict from The Times in fact comes from the business pages of The Sunday Times, almost eighteen months ago. Back then, Elvis Evolution was 'the talk of the city', which is to say, the City of London, when it was revealed that Layered Reality's investors were a veritable who's who of the business world, all the way up to and including the now equally notorious Labour donor Lord Alli. In London's Docklands, there's a 100-metre superyacht parked directly outside Elvis Evolution's front door. It's very hard not to imagine them all on board, trying not to die of laughter. The entrance area is an apparent recreation of Bob Burbank's all-American diner, where NBC television executives rushed to find a studio audience for Elvis Presley's famous comeback show in 1968, on which the event is centred. It does look like an identikit 1960s all-American diner, very much like the one you can find on almost any British high street. In fairness, Bob's has really gone the extra mile. I tried to order a cappuccino but, it being 1968, they only do two types of coffee, black or white. If 'The King' couldn't order a flat white — then neither can you. • What's the secret behind the success of Abba Voyage? The crowd is 90 per cent retirees, which is not entirely unexpected at an Elvis Presley-themed attraction at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon. Quite a lot of them are wearing VIP lanyards, which confirm they've parted with at least £180 for a premium package and are doing their best to pretend to be thrilled about it. But by this point, they've read the reviews. Quite a bit of cash has clearly been spent on two railroad car simulators that take visitors from Elvis's birthplace of Tupelo, Mississippi, all the way to Memphis, Tennessee. Eventually the central partition drops and the carriages merge to form a theatre with a stage and giant screens. It's a nice idea, but one significant disadvantage is that the stage now has a column in front of it. There is not a single seat in the house that could not be described as 'severely restricted view'. Not even the £300 ones. • From Abba to Elvis — are holograms really the future of pop? Naturally, there's a lengthy interval in the Blue Hawaii bar, where VIP guests drink giant sickly blue cocktails as a slight return on their jaw-dropping outlay. It's hard to wonder whether these might not be contributing to the three further warnings about not abusing the performers. It's also here that we get the chance to pose with the now notorious cardboard cutout of 'The King' in his underwear. I duly oblige. The outrage only really comes at the finale. We're led into the TV studio and, after a fresh verbal warning about abuse and a firm instruction to please actually applaud when the 'applause' signs light up, the finale begins — which is to say, someone presses play on a video of Elvis's 1968 comeback show, which absolutely all the attendees have seen, many, many times before. Also, unless you've paid for the VIP treatment, you'll be ushered into the standing-room only section. A meagre £75 does not secure a seat. There are, in fairness, three live performers in burgundy jumpsuits, dressed up like the backing band from the famous 1968 show. It's clear they've had a very long week. They look like Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Three waiting to perform at Folsom Prison and wondering if they'll make it out alive. The finale can be most generously described as underwhelming. By the time of my visit, several days of widespread national disdain have done their job. Expectations have been managed. Rather than riots, there is mere incredulous laughter. When the performers walk off again to make way for a ten-minute documentary explaining just how much of a big deal Elvis really was, the crowd are merely shaking their heads in disdain. By this point, Elvis Illusion ticket holders already know that they're caught in a trap and, despite the extremely pedestrian nature of the show, we can't actually walk out. When we're finally allowed out, the man in front of me dares to ask his wife what she thought. There's a long pause, and then: 'It wasn't as bad as everyone says.' That sort of praise could easily end up on the billboard. Elvis Evolution is certainly a hunk of something, but it's not burning love.
Telegraph
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The Daily T: Keir Starmer's year from hell
This Friday marks exactly one year since Keir Starmer was elected as Prime Minister in a landslide victory. Despite only polling 33pc of the vote share, Labour trounced the Conservatives, came away with an enormous majority of 174, and looked set for two terms of governmental dominance. As Starmer himself put it, Labour was planning for 'a decade of national renewal'. Camilla and Tim discuss how – from Lord Alli's free clothes to Rachel Reeves's disastrous Budget, from going to war with farmers to the Chagos giveaway, from U-turns on winter fuel payments to U-turns on welfare reforms – Keir Starmer has somehow managed to squander all of the momentum from his election win in just twelve months. With his record low approval ratings, is he already at risk of being replaced? And if so – who by?
Telegraph
21-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Who are Labour's people? It is alienating all voters
Keir Starmer is bad at maths. I'm not talking about the state of the economy or Lord Alli's expenses, egregious proof of the statement though these may be. No; I'm referring to the basic number-totting that his Government must do to keep their electoral coalition together. All governments make calculations about people they feel they can, essentially, afford to lose. Sometimes this is quite a sizable quotient; consider Mrs Thatcher in the North of England or Tony Blair's assault on the countryside. It wasn't until 2019 that Tory support recovered in the North. Until 2024, post-Blair Labour never won more than a handful of rural or even semi-rural seats. Nevertheless, these decisions were made with a clear eye on electoral calculus. Such a shallow-but-wide electoral coalition as Starmer achieved last July was never going to be permanent. Given that voters' primary motivation at the polls in 2024 was 'we are furious with the Tories', there was little prospect of maintaining the sort of polling that delivered majorities – though often thin ones – to Labour candidates across the country. However, rather than build a practical base in the light of threats to this broad alliance from Reform and the Lib Dems, instead Sir Keir seems to be performing a 'death by a thousand cuts' on his own potential coalition. Less than a year in, the question remains, who is the Government governing for? Who are 'Starmer's People '? We can work out which groups they are prepared to ignore and isolate – a list that seems to be growing by the day. Short of individually stuffing dog poo through every letterbox in the nation it is hard to discern what the strategy is. On their own, each group is possible to isolate; from the tiny demographics of Chagossians and hereditary peers to the more problematic subsets of farmers, fishermen, families who educate their children privately, pensioners, those living in rural areas aggravated by Labour's fanciful ambition to decarbonise the grid by 2030, the list of people who appear vindictively targeted by Government decisions grows longer by the day. In systematically picking fights with numerous groups, the Starmer administration perhaps assumes that each is small, or irrelevant enough to make little difference. Now, taking every fight on its own, this may be correct. It was once true that the assembled might of UK agriculture could have brought down a government. These days, alas, that is no longer the case. However – and this is where Keir Starmer's maths unravels – these battles add up. At some point, enough straw really will break the camel's back. You may not be able to please all of the people all of the time, but you at least need to please some of them. We are fast reaching the tipping point where more voters have good reason actively to hate this administration than passively tolerate it. Even the Government's attempts to woo key voter groups or demographics are marred by a fundamental problem: each rhetorical turn is almost always followed by a totally contradictory act of policy. For example, the ' Island of Strangers' speech, which at risk of isolating the bien-pensant urban liberal voting base from which Labour HQ is mainly drawn, will have potentially stirred something among disenchanted ordinary voters outside London, for whom the realities of migration are more than a nice new Thai restaurant in Primrose Hill. However, this being Starmer, it was instantly followed by promises of an EU freedom of movement scheme which would enable Britain to become a dumping ground for stubborn youth unemployment on the Continent (plus their dependants), totally contradicting, both in word and in spirit, what might have been achieved. People are already suspicious of the PM, a singularly disingenuous politician, and this sort of bipolar policy fluctuation only furthers the distrust. This is tequila slammer politics; for every bite of lime, there must be a flick of salt, and a burning swallow. And, as with too many tequila slammers, people are already beginning to feel sick. The cumulative effect is that there will be no 'political children' of Starmer; nobody will say they owe him their prosperity, their home, their livelihood or liberty, as they might have said of Thatcher or Blair. After all, the young who might benefit from EU mobility schemes may yet plump for the Green Party. Even the middle-class frequent flyer could be disappointed; despite ministers' efforts to hype it up, the deal doesn't automatically allow Brits to use EU lines at airports. NHS staff may cheer the spending boost the health service received last year but, despite the NHS's size, this demographic still isn't enough to carry the day. The Johnson experience should serve as a warning. Conservatives are still being punished for the decision to break faith with the millions who repeatedly voted for migration control by ushering in levels unprecedented in British history. If recent polling is anything to go by, they may be punished forever. Yet Sir Keir is repeating the fundamental Tory mistake of 'talking Right, governing Left', ultimately winning neither. For all the rhetoric about 'smashing the gangs', the numbers in migrant hotels continue to rise, and wherever a new hotel opens it creates a new cohort of irate locals to swell the ranks of the growing anti-Labour coalition. Unless something changes radically, this time next year will usher in a further round of local ballots when these numbers will become electoral reality. In short, bad as Keir Starmer may be at maths, the maths is looking a good deal worse for Keir Starmer.
Al Bawaba
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Bawaba
Is Keir Starmer gay? New video sparks speculations
Published April 21st, 2025 - 09:52 GMT ALBAWABA - A new video recently showcased an individual who looks like UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer kissing another man through a CCTV camera. The footage in question sparked widespread debate and speculations on social media about its authenticity. While many speculated about the viral video shared across social media, several others pointed out that it's either AI-generated or fake. The clip was first shared on TikTok by a user named "Head full of dreams," alongside a sentence that read, "The CCTV footage has finally dropped." — JAG Talks (@JAGtalks) April 21, 2025 A social media user on Musk's X (formerly Twitter) wrote, "If you think this AI-generated video is real, you might need some help, the internet might not be a safe place for you if you're prone to believing everything you see online." Another jokingly added, "Good try, l had to double take i thought it was my husband with my the local take away manager though." The video, which was also shared on X, claims that the other individual whom Keir Starmer was kissing is a UK member of the House of Lords named Waheed Alli, Baron Alli (aka Lord Alli), without citing official sources from renowned media outlets, making the claims in question suspicious. Several others claimed that the video isn't AI-generated but fake, stressing that the individuals showcased in the video aren't Starmer and Lord Alli. This solidifies concerns about the effects of AI-generated content on the untrained eye. AI-generated content is only improving with time, and it's becoming more difficult to notice a difference between it and what's real each day. Platforms such as Meta's Facebook have witnessed a high surge in AI content. A recent study revealed that individuals ranging from 25 to 34 make up the platform's highest number of users. However, Facebook also witnessed a rise in older users, who, according to several social media posts, many of whom believe AI-generated content is a fact. © 2000 - 2025 Al Bawaba (
