He just wants to be your teddy bear

If only Elvis had impersonated Doug Spencer.

The King would probably still be alive and karate-kicking.

Fit and trim. Happily married. Not zonked on painkillers … Spencer, a 43-year old U.S. mail carrier from Santa, Idaho, looks the way we all wish Elvis would have looked.

Slipping into his white, bejeweled $2,000 jumpsuit for our interview Tuesday, Spencer is a ton of peanut butter shy of that porked-out, girdle-wearing E-Man of the 1970s.

“Ah don’t think ah’m Elvis,” the father of three tells me in a spot-on Southern Elvis drawl.

Some fans, however, tend to get confused.

Spencer’s wife, Jeannie, says she’s witnessed screaming women come close to swooning when her husband takes the stage and starts swiveling his hips, giving away blue satin scarves and striking those unmistakable karate poses.

Spencer adopts a confessional tone. “Lemme tell ya, man,” he says of the hysteria. “Ah get a little nervous sometimes. They see the suit. They hear the voice. They kinda git caught up in it.”

In the Bizzaro World of Elvis mimicry, Spencer is beginning to make a name for himself.

Earlier this month, he took first place and $2,500 in a competition at the Isle of Capri Casino in Black Hawk, Colo.

The win puts Spencer into the January “Tribute to the King” finals – sort of a faux Elvis Super Bowl – in Bossier City, La.

The event offers $50,000 in prize money and will feature some of America’s top counterfeit Elvi.

Should Spencer end up with some of this chunka-chunka burnin’ change, he would like to put together his own five-piece band with an additional three backup female singers.

Oddly enough, it was Jeannie who prodded her hubby into this.

“It was all her,” drawls Spencer. “Ah’m not one to jump onto a stage. Ah thought she was crazy, man.”

Jeannie always knew her man had it in him.

First there’s Spencer’s uncanny manner of Elvis speech. Spencer swears it’s a natural thing, a byproduct from growing up in South Texas.

Then there’s the hair. No wig needed here. Spencer is blessed with a head full of thick locks. Add a little black dye, grow out some mutton chops and – voila! – it’s no wonder Spencer gets people all shook up.

The singing wasn’t a stretch. A preacher’s kid, Spencer says he grew up belting out gospel tunes in his daddy’s church.

“I like to call him Elvis,” Jeannie says.

About two years ago, Jeannie encouraged Doug to sing an Elvis number in a karaoke contest. The positive reaction got the couple thinking of bigger and better venues.

Visions of Elvis, Spencer’s side business, was born.

“As ah always say,” he offers, “follow the advice of a good woman.”

With a CD player in tow, Spencer will show up at your door and sing you two songs. He’s done Elvis in a barn after a wedding. He’s taken his Elvis to a child’s birthday party.

During a recent airplane ride, he sang “Love Me Tender” to an airline attendant who was having a birthday.

Spencer says he wants to be available for “anything, anytime and anywhere.”

You’ve got to have the jumpsuits if you’re going to do ‘70s Elvis right. Spencer ordered two of them. During performances he accessorizes the outfits with the necessary bling: garish rings and a gold chain that holds a dangling gold eagle about the size of a pie plate.

Spencer has spent hours studying Elvis performances. “You’ve gotta know the moves,” he says. “People don’t want to see my interpretation of him. They want to see Elvis.”

Casino contests are where the money is. Spencer has entered five of them in his road to making the upcoming finals.

“People in St. Maries love it,” says Jeannie of the town where Spencer works. “Elvis is their mailman.”

It is great that Spencer is a mail carrier and not only because it opens the door to slide in a cheap “Return to Sender” joke.

Spencer is in a position to send a message to all of those unsung heroes who distribute our mail:

Don’t go postal. Go Presley.