Lisa Marie Presley and Peppa Pig: the ultimate pop culture mash-up

Lisa Marie Presley and Peppa Pig: the ultimate pop culture mash-up

When the daughter of Elvis starts talking about Peppa Pig, it’s difficult not to feel part of the ultimate pop culture mash-up.

Lisa Marie Presley, who begins her Australian tour on March 19, now lives in England with her record producer husband Michael Lockwood and their five-year-old twin daughters Finley and Harper.

So the obvious question is, they must be fans of the British cartoon phenomenon Peppa Pig? (Yes, we did talk about Elvis too, but more on that later).

‘Oh my god, Peppa Pig. And Ben and Holly. They love it. And In the Night Garden,’’ Presley, 46, said, with a laugh, from the midst of rehearsals in Los Angeles on Friday.

‘‘It’s kind of creepy [In the Night Garden], especially that little Upsy Daisy, she keeps kissing what’s-his-name, the little blue guy? Igglepiggle! She always has to kiss him, I don’t quite get that. Whatever.’’

The twins will be coming to Australia with Presley, as will her older daughter Riley Keough, 24, an actress and model, who appears in the latest Mad Max movie, Fury Road.

Presley said Riley was ‘‘completely smitten’’ with her Australian boyfriend, a stuntman she met on the set.

‘‘He’s a sweet kid. I like him,’’ she said.

For a woman with a extraordinary life, from being the only child of a music icon, in Elvis, to the one-time wife of another, in the form of Michael Jackson, Presley sounds remarkably down-to-earth. She says moving to East Sussex, England several years ago is a big part of that.

‘‘I wanted to be normal. I’d just had enough, I’d been through a lot,’’ she said. ‘‘I’d experienced a lot of betrayal, a lot of things around me I thought were something and they were different to what they were and they were just too much. So we kind of went from ground zero, I wanted to start over somewhere. I needed to get as far away as I could to get my head together. I wrote the record and I fell in love with it and then we bought the house.’’

Presley, who said she had chronic fatigue syndrome, was ‘‘manning up’’ for her world tour, with her show in Canberra on March 23 at the Southern Cross Club in Woden.

She says she naturally pursued music, despite it being such a daunting prospect in the shadow of her father. Her latest album Storm and Grace has been critically acclaimed, including by industry bible Rolling Stone.

‘‘I’m always happy about that because I have so much against me. It’s sort of, if you will, spitting against a tidal wave. That’s just purely my work and my art and what’s in my heart. It’s pure for me and it’s just music for me. It’s nothing tabloid-y, it’s nothing sensational, it’s just what it is,’’ she said.

‘‘I really always appreciate being acknowledged for my own work.’’

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