"IF Elvis was alive today," said the toper in a Glasgow pub, "He'd probably be dead." Unpicking that conundrum, I realised he was trying to say that if Elvis had lived instead of suffering a fatal heart attack in the late seventies, he would probably have succumbed to some other ailment by now. For the cruel arithmetic shows that Elvis would be eighty years old this week if he had lived until now. It is a difficult mental picture to think of a grey-haired Elvis still shaking those hips, even if they had become artificial replacements.

His fans though have not forgotten, and on Saturday, two days after what would have been his 80th birthday, they will gather at Prestwick Airport to mark the only place in the United Kingdom that he ever actually visited. Strange to think that a birthday celebration is one of the few occasions where you will get a crowd at Prestwick Airport these days, where flights are now almost as rare as politicians' apologies.

Prestwick did seem to lose its way when its owners used the couthy TV catchphrase "Pure Dead Brilliant" to promote the airport. A local once swore to me that the agency who came up with that also tried to sell a couthy motto to the private Kilmarnock Jail when it opened, but it rejected the suggestion of "Gonnae No Dae That".

Presley's appearance at Prestwick was of course when he was in the American Army, and was flying back to the States from Germany in March, 1960. His plane had touched down at Prestwick to refuel, and word-of-mouth spread the news almost as quick as Facebook would these days, and a small crowd of screaming girls grabbed the chain fence around the perimeter and shouted his name. Only a couple of journalists managed to make it to Prestwick to have a word with Elvis - Ian Imrie of the then Glasgow Herald, and Ian Nelson of the Scottish Daily Mail. Sergeant Presley, as he then was, seemed unsure of his surroundings. His less than memorable words when he landed were said to have been: "Where am I?"

Ian Nelson lived in Prestwick at the time and had been phoned by the colonel in charge of the American base at the airport who said they had someone famous arriving. Ian popped over, and asked Elvis, who now knew where he was, whether he would ever like to perform in Scotland. A polite Elvis, in his Army uniform, replied in his southern drawl: "Ah kind of like the idea of Scotland. Ah'm going to do a European tour and it would be nice to come back here." The European tour, however, never materialised. He also avoided questions on his then teenage girlfriend Priscilla, left behind in Frankfurt, crying her eyes out.

Recalled Ian years later: "Luckily, we had a small lounge to ourselves, just myself and Elvis, and we chatted away for over 20 minutes while the plane was refuelling. I thought he was charming, a very polite young man. He called me 'sir'. He was just like the kid next door. His parting words to me were, 'Well, sir, it's been very nice talking to you. Hope we meet again some time.' But, of course, we never did."

The only hiccup for Ian was that when he arrived home his daughter Nicola demanded to know why dad had not got Elvis's autograph for her. His lame excuse of "But that isn't what journalists do" cut no ice with his disappointed daughter.

Of course Elvis is not the only foreign visitor to Prestwick Airport. Reader Dennis Kelly was in the airport's restaurant queue when a young Japanese tourist nervously pointed at the sausages behind the glass counter, and was then asked by the buxom Ayrshire lady serving him: "Mash?" Said Dennis: "He looked even more nervous now, and as he was obviously stuck, she tried to help him by increasing her volume and saying, 'D'ye want mash wi' that?' "Seeing how panic-stricken he now looked, she again tried to help by saying, 'Mash, ye ken, tatties, mashed tatties.'At that point the young man took his sausages and fled." Added Dennis: "Who says we Scots are not a helpful people?"

And folk musician Roy Gullane flew into Prestwick once from Canada where an American lady who got off the plane looked at the portraits on the wall of famous Scots and asked, not unreasonably: "Honey, what's a Bruce?"

Of course there will be even bigger celebrations at Graceland, Elvis's home in Memphis. I visited it once, and your initial reaction is that the decoration is, how do we put it, tacky and tasteless. But as a guide pointed out: "This is how it was decorated when he died so it is in a time-warp. If he had lived Elvis would have got some decorating expert in and it would be a lot more fashionable today."

Besides, if you come to mock, you would soon fall quiet when you go through the long corridor on which are hung his gold records and awards. They stretch as far as the eye can see. His charitable donations and help for local cases were also immense. As loyal locals point out, Elvis did not abandon the south when he became famous, to make his home in New York or wherever. Memphis was where he returned to.

If you cannot make it to Memphis, there is a stage show, The Elvis Years, coming to Dundee and Inverness in April. Billed as the story of The King, the show spans his life from the day he walked into the Sun Studios in Memphis as a teenage truck driver, through to the Grand Ole Opry and Louisiana Hayride days, the death of his beloved mother, his time in the army, the Hollywood movie years, the 1968 comeback special and the Las Vegas concerts. Oh and about 50 of his songs.

And we'll probably hear a few of his songs on Radio Clyde over the coming week. I should check the story that Clyde once ran a competition where the prize was either a £100 shopping voucher or two tickets to see an Elvis tribute act. You had to phone in and press 1 for the money or 2 for the show.