Chris Hutchins is an English author, journalist and former public relations practitioner. Early life Christopher Neville Hutchins is the younger of two sons and one daughter of Edward Victor Hutchins (d. 1944) and Kathleen Violet Ness (d 1995). He was educated at Torquay Boys' Grammar School. In 1956, he began a fan club for ventriloquist Terry Hall and Lenny the Lion. Hutchins lost interest when he discovered Elvis Presley and girls. Hutchins then landed a job as a journalist on the Mid Devon Times on a salary of £2-a-week. In 1961, Hutchins joined the NME (New Musical Express) but left the paper the following year to travel to Hamburg with Little Richard whose autobiography he was ghosting. In the German city, he met and befriended The Beatles – who called him "Crispy Hutch" – and when he rejoined the NME in 1962 he was assigned to travel with them on all their tours. Having befriended Elvis Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and then Presley himself, it was Hutchins who set up a party in Presley's Los Angeles home for the Beatles to meet Presley on Friday 27 August 1965. Public relations In 1966, Hutchins left the NME where he was news editor to form his own PR company. His first client (on 26 December 1966 for the sum of £25-a-week)<ref name="Ellis">'Tom Jones Close Up – Lucy Ellis and Bryony Sutherland (Omnibus, 2000)</ref> was Tom Jones who he represented for the next ten years. It was Hutchins who persuaded Jones's manager Gordon Mills to change the singer's image. Under Hutchins's tutelage, Jones's marriage was played down, his sexuality played up and his availability to the press limited.Tom Jones: The Biography – Robin Eggar (Headline, 2000) Since Mills also managed Engelbert Humperdinck and Gilbert O'Sullivan, Hutchins became their PR as well. Other clients included the Bee Gees, Status Quo, the Moody Blues, Procol Harum and Eric Clapton. For a while he also worked for Harold Wilson who became his friend. Indeed, it was Hutchins's friendship with the prime minister that saved a difficult situation. In April 1974, Tom Jones was kept a virtual prisoner in his suite at the Caracas Hilton in Venezuela during an ill-judged tour and a cable from Hutchins to Wilson helped to ease the wheels of the party's freedom plus a bribe of $12,000. Journalism In 1976, after ten years with Management Agency & Music (MAM) or The