ENTERTAINMENT - Are you loony tonight?

Eddie Vee wheels his arm around in time with the dramatic chords of I Can't Stop Loving You. "Bam, bam, bam," he sings, knees flexing, brow furrowed in concentration. As the music comes to its finale, whoops and applause break out. Then silence fills the bedroom once again.

I am perched on the end of Eddie's bed, watching the "Yorkshire Elvis" sing along to his live CD of Presley covers, Caught In The Act. This was recorded not at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, but at Lidgett Grove Church Hall, Acomb. There is a video of the same event, but I have been spared that. "When you see their faces they're absolutely rapturous," insists Eddie. They do sound as if they're enjoying themselves, I agree.

For the next 15 minutes he fast forwards through his CD, although not fast enough, to play me the highlights. "Now is that singing, or is that singing!" he says, as we listen to him reaching for the top notes of The Wonder of You.

At times he leaps from the bed, unable to contain his urge to perform. Being in such close proximity to the hip-gyrating, lip-curling man who would be King is disconcerting, but leaves me in no doubt that his Elvis obsession is sincere.

His impersonation has not impressed everyone. Before putting on the Live at Lidgett CD, Eddie plays me an audio clip of two television presenters discussing his appearance on the Channel 5 documentary Family Confidential. "He can't sing and he's wearing moccasins!" cries one. "He's certainly big enough to be Elvis," says the other. They dissolve into laughter.

Such ridicule bounces off Eddie. "I'm reasonably proud of my singing. I take a lot of stick for it. I don't mind having a laugh, but I can do the business."

And he's an old pro now. Eddie, real name Graham Cambridge, started singing in his church choir. As a teenager he started a punk band, The Jolly Sods. "Then we had a glam-type band named Okay. I used to play drums with that.

"We had this allegedly good-looking lead singer at that time. One of our songs was 'Demon Cassette Record Player'." He chants a few bars. "That got people going. We were like a punkified Gary Glitter."

Oddly, however, young Graham's first ambition was not to storm the citadel of showbusiness - but to be a librarian. "I have hundreds of books. Most of them I bought between 18 and 19." But he quit when he found the job was "quiet and boring".

It was another Graham Cambridge, his uncle, who put him onto Elvis. A member of York band The Clubmen, Graham senior "said Elvis was the king".

Eddie made his first appearance as Elvis by chance. He was running his mobile disco at a holiday camp in Rhyl, south Wales, when the main act failed to show. He decided to step out from behind his turntables and on to the stage. It was a defining moment.

"I came out dressed up as Elvis in leather trousers and a big jazzy shirt and the women screamed," he said, misty-eyed at the memory. "And when I came off they said how sexy I was."

Since then he has been Elvis in pubs and clubs around York, appeared on umpteen TV and radio shows and been the subject of news stories in The Sun, Star and Daily Mail. He took the name Eddie from a Wizzard LP, Introducing Eddy and the Falcons, and Vee from the fact that "Elvis tended to be called EV by the Memphis mafia".

By far his biggest exposure to date was in that Channel 5 documentary. This centred on wife Jane's threat to leave him if he did not swap his Elvis obsession for a proper job. Eddie is clearly a family man - he has been with Jane for nearly 20 years and dotes on daughters Charlotte, eight, and April, six - so wasn't this row cooked up for television?

No, he insists. Many a time Jane has been out the door, suitcases in hand, only to forgive him and return. Tenderly he adds: "We don't know what we would do without each other, really. That's what it boils down to."

And Eddie does now have a job. During the day he looks after the family home in Acomb and delivers the kids to and from school; at night he is a rep for the Global Vacations holiday club.

Whether true to life or not, the Channel 5 documentary did spark his sudden entry into politics. Alan "Howling Laud" Hope, Screaming Lord Sutch's successor as leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party, read a newspaper report about it and immediately recognised that Eddie had true Loony potential.

"He saw us in the newspaper saying how proud I was to be from Yorkshire," Eddie explained. "He called me up and said 'I like anybody who's proud of their own area. The fact that you're a bit of a nutter about Elvis is good as well'."

As a result, Graham Cambridge has become the Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidate for the Bootham ward council election on May 11. He has been given the title: King Eddie Vee, Minister For Yorkshire Tea, Yorkshire Puddings and Elvis Music.

So, I ask, were you interested in politics before now? "From the discos point of view, I have done discos for both Labour and for the Young Conservatives and I have done private functions for MPs. I have met quite a few political people."

His political hero is Winston Churchill. "He was a bit of a rebel."

Eddie has been out canvassing in Bootham, but most of his policies seem neither monstrous nor loony. In fact, they are as staid as the business suit he wore to hand in his election papers to the Guildhall.

"The council tax has just gone up by five per cent and inflation's just two per cent. I want a reduction in the council tax," he says.

"The other thing is this craze York has got for traffic lights and road humps. People's cars are just getting ruined on the speed humps. Although it's sensible near schools they have put them all over the place."

Whoa, steady there, Eddie - lower council tax and an end to speed humps! That's not very silly at all. At this rate the party that advocated turning the butter mountain into a ski slope will seem as boring as the rest of politics.

Fortunately, Eddie does have one faintly daft idea. "I want an Elvis Meditation Garden, maybe in Museum Gardens. It would be good for tourism."

Ah, it had to come back to Mr Presley. "Elvis was really into politics," says York's most unlikely politician. "One of his proudest moments was meeting President Nixon and getting an FBI badge."

It sounds like the real King could have been a Monster Raving Loony too.