IF you’re looking for trouble, look him right in the face, to slightly adapt a line from the old Elvis classic. Which was a mistake a trio of punks made back in 1970s Worcester.

They tried to take the Mickey out of Lenny Presley and his two Teddy Boy mates and came off much the worse. “Two of them ran away,” said Len, “then we grabbed hold of the third and hung him from a lamppost by his braces and left him there unharmed. As we walked off he started to cry.”

Four decades later and Lenny Presley is Worcester’s last Teddy Boy. Seventy years old now, but still wearing the drapes and drainpipes, he’s calmed down a lot. “I’ve never actually been in trouble with the police,” he said. Then in the next breath added: “Although I was once bound over to keep the peace for fighting.” No surprise there. After all what self respecting Ted would take a backward step when getting the verbals.

Also no surprise, he wasn’t born Lenny Presley, but Lenny Rhodes, one of a family of six children who lived with their parents in Bush Walk, St John’s. He changed his name 40 years ago in tribute to his great hero Elvis. He explained: “The first moment I heard him it was like magic. My eldest sister Brenda had a boyfriend called Tony Miles, who was an original Teddy Boy. He wore a light blue drape jacket with a black collar and black trimmings to the cuffs and pockets. He used to come round our house to play records on the Dansette (record player). One day he put on Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis and it just blew me away. I wasn’t even a teenager then, but he told me: ‘If you are going to get into this music Len, just follow Elvis and you won’t go far wrong’.”

Tony Miles taught young Len the Teddy Boy style. How to walk with a bob, not swagger, with thumbs tucked into the belt. Or how to casually lean against a wall or lamppost, again with thumbs in belt and legs crossed. It all signified individuality and casual defiance.

However it was while before Len Rhodes could immerse himself in the Teddy Boy world. The army came calling first, or rather he called it after a row with his father. After leaving Christopher Whitehead Secondary School, he got a job as a porter at Shrub Hill railway station but soon became fed up with it. “Dad had been on searchlights during the Second World War and was often on to me to join the army. Then one day he taunted me: ‘You haven’t got it in you’. That hurt me, so I went along to the recruiting office in Foregate Street and signed up.

“I did five-and-a-half years in the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, including a spell in Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles. I was in Ballymena for 18 months and was mighty glad to get out of there. I was on patrol in the Shanklin area one day when a sniper took a pot shot at us and the bullet pinged off a post only about ten feet away.”

As soon as he was demobbed, Len took up the offer of a set of Teddy Boy gear that a Ted in Malvern had made to him before he joined up. That’s when his Teddy Boy world began in earnest.

He said: “There was a group of us, Dave Berry from Worcester and Tony Lewis and Dave Healey from Malvern. We used to go out on Friday and Saturday nights and have a good time. We never had any trouble with the police, they used to respect us. They’d drive past, give us the thumbs-up and say: ‘Just behave yourself lads’. Of course there was the odd fight because some people were always calling us names, but we never used blades or anything like that. Just fists. It’s part of the Teddy Boy creed: ‘If you can’t use your fists you’re no good at all’.”

It’s not cheap to be a Teddy Boy either. Len added: “The first drape I bought cost me £65 from Individual Tailoring in The Hopmarket. Now the cheapest you can get is about £170 on Ebay. The drainpipes (trousers) must be right, too, with 13-inch bottoms and it’s very hard to find the shoes as well. The only place around here is a shop in Alum Rock, Birmingham. To buy the whole outfit these days would cost around £1,000.”

Back home in Leigh Sinton, Len has an Elvis collection of recordings that stretches to 28 CDs, four box sets and no fewer than 78 LPs. Surprisingly, his favourite Elvis track is I Just Can’t Help Believing, a medium tempo ballad and not a rocker.

“In fact these days most of my favourites are the ballads,” he added. “It’s probably because at my age I can’t jive like I used to.”

But never, ever will he hang up his blue suede shoes.