I see a new craze in the offing. Elvis impersonators, you can put aside your jewel-encrusted jumpsuits and wrap-around sunglasses. (Frankly, they suited you no more than they did the King.) But hang on to your black hair dye and - if necessary - the body padding. You are going take a break from routine and give us Robert Maxwell instead. Frankly, it's easy-peasy. And you don't even have to sing.

This week in Milton Keynes I watched Michael Pennington giving us his version of Cap'n Bob in Ian Curteis's new play The Bargain. As one who was able to study the original, in his too, too solid flesh, on a number of occasions, I can certainly vouch for the accuracy of his portrayal. Though he doesn't hide the swinish gluttony, this comes over as one aspect of his lust for life, which in an odd way is rather endearing.

Next Friday, on BBC2, we shall be getting another impersonation of Maxwell supplied by actor David Suchet. This, too, is going to be a balanced portrait of the financier. The director, Colin Barr, said: "What we are interested in is portraying him as the person he really was: charming, mistrusting, seductive, bullying, childlike, sometimes humble." Suchet himself has been singing from the same hymn sheet. An admirer of Maxwell's widow, whom he has met on a number of social occasions, he said: "I have the utmost respect for Betty and would not have taken this part unless I felt we were going to be telling the story fairly, that we were not going to be casting it in bolder colours than necessary."

Maxwell is, in a sense, a role that Suchet has been building towards for some years. I was not alone in noting that his brilliant portrayal of the crooked financier Augustus Melmotte, in the BBCTV adaptation of Anthony Trollope's great novel The Way We Live Now, clearly owed much to his study of Capt Bob. On this subject, it has always seemed strange that with so obvious a prototype available for comparison, Maxwell was able to get away with his crimes for so long.

More recently, Suchet gave us the Maxwell touch again in his creation of Romanian businessman Gregor Antonescu in the 2005 stage production of Terence Rattigan's little-seen play Father and Son. As I pointed out in my review, the heavy black eyebrows and silk-lined overcoat were a dead giveaway.

Speaking of such accoutrements, Suchet told the Radio Times this week that he has played the 22-stone giant without recourse to padding. He explained: "For me, the voice is the entry point for any character, and in Maxwell's case it comes from deep down within him; it's an expression of power, of self-assurance, of incredible self-confidence."

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I heard that voice again on Wednesday morning when Radio 4's Today programme played - as a plug for next week's drama - some of the many hours of taped telephone recordings kept by his former head of security. What I did not say is that I switched on my radio at around 7.30am, at precisely the moment that the selection began. It was some time before I twigged what was going on, but I knew straightaway who it was talking.