Lada

                         I've got all my life to live
                         I've got all my love to give
                         and I'll survive
                         I will survive
                         I will survive...!

     The song ended and Gloria took a bow, to wild applause. She remained on the stage after the applause had dwindled and for one horrible moment Bond thought she was about to do an encore but before she could the next performer had mounted the stage and pushed her out of the way, to friendly cheers and jeers from the crowd. No time was wasted at all, the show must go on, and the next performer was into his stride in the time it takes to say evenin' everbody mah name's Elvis Presley, which is what he proceeded to do.

                         Now since my baby left me
                         I’ve found a new placed to dwell
                         It’s down at the end of lonely street
                         at Heartbreak hotel....

     Bond reflected that if the performer on the stage made a habit of singing in the bath it was no wonder that his baby had left him, for he was truly awful. Bond himself was the possessor of a passable baritone but even he would not have got up in public and sang, as this man was doing, and especially not in white cowboy boots and a pink jumpsuit.
     Apart from Elvis several others among the throng had taken the trouble to dress up as the person they were to impersonate, among them a Dolly Parton look-alike who would probably soon be telling all the females in the room to 'Staynd By Their Men', an Ozzy Osbourne complete with live bat, and an Elton John, although the Elton John could simply have been a bespectacled little bald man with two club feet who was merely a spectator.
     Elvis was going down rather well, possibly because most of the audience were singing along with him and couldn’t hear him, The King obviously being a particular favourite of theirs. Bond by now had had enough but was too much of a gentleman to leave while an act was in mid-performance, even one as bad as the present incumbent of the stage. However the song soon mercifully ended and Bond was about to return down the passage to his pork pie and then bed when he was arrested, just a surely and securely as if he had been nailed to the ground, by the sight of the next performer making her way to the stage.