ELVIS AARON PRESLEY, one time truck driver and supreme rock-and-roll superstar, has been taking some pains of late to allay a host of false rumours that he is sick, messed up on drugs, dying or gay.

  Although anyone of Presley's stature is liable to generate a fairly steady flow of rumour, his life, up to a couple of years ago, was so secret that all that really leaked out were a few vague tales of his games with the Memphis mafia, the crew of high-school buddies and god ol' boys he kept on the payroll as companions behind the walls of his guarded mansion.

  The smears went into overdrive when Presley emerged from seclusion, started to play Vegas and all those other big rooms packed with middle-aged ladies with blue rinses and Mary Whitehouse specs. He even got himself photographed in a mink suit, carrying a flashlight to somebody's wedding. Behaviour like that can get you called all kinds of things.

  Today Elvis Presley is the undisputed hot number as far as the US show biz scandal sheets are concerned. Every week at least two dozen of them offer you the hot poop on Elvis's illegitimate kids or terminal cancer. He has even edged those one time winners Liz Taylor and Jackie Onassis off the front pages

  Presley, of course, didn't take this lying down. During his last season at the Las Vegas Hilton Presley's act became a marathon of denials and denounciations with songs in between.

  He launched into long diatribes against bellhops and head waiters who carried lying tales to the gutter press.

  He showed the audience the badge and certificate given him by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics when they made him an honorary nark to prove he'd never messed with drugs.

  At the climax of some shows he brought his father, daughter, ex-wife and girlfriend on stage, and explained how these vicious rumours offended and upset them. Priscilla Presley was even pressed into service to produce a series of syndicated newspaper confessions that proved, among other things, that the Pelvis's sexual tastes ran along conventional lines.

  All in all Presley seemed to be making a very major effort to stop all these bad things they were saying about him. His methods were maybe a little odd, but I suppose Presley is entitled to his little eccentricities.

  Except no-one has yet explained the night at the Hilton when Presley stayed up all night painting half of the hotel's neo-gothic proscenium with black household gloss paint, which, to say the least, is strange behaviour for a thirty-nine year old superstar.