Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Beatle for Sale
“Money can’t buy you love, but it sure can buy you a Beatle,” he remarked wryly.
“Paul is a vegetarian and a friend of the gorilla nation,” I replied haughtily. “I will not believe gossip about him until I have researched the matter to my own satisfaction.”
My investigations have since confirmed that the story is well-founded, although there are several qualifications to add. A million dollars is pocket money for Paul, so he was clearly there to network and promote his own investment ideas. Many of those fund managers will soon be putting money into sea cucumber farms. They were also ardent fans of his music:
“I love you Paul!” screamed one investor, jumping up from her seat the moment he appeared.
I’m not the least bit envious of these people. The truly lucky ones were those who heard the Beatles rehearse in the studio. The Beatles themselves were incredibly lucky to have heard themselves play when they were playing.
Although I did not attend the famous rooftop concert at Savile Row, I am proud to reveal that a couple of chimpanzees were among the onlookers. Having been hired to appear in a TV commercial, they were being measured for suits in a nearby couturier when the music started. Quick as a flash, they scarpered out of the shop and bounded up the tallest building in the street to get a panoramic view of the action. The Fab Four’s hirsute appearance affected them as deeply as the music, which they danced to in the traditional arms-forward-bum-backwards style.
People often wonder why it took the police over 40 minutes to end the concert, which was causing major traffic jams as well as annoying several old farts in the vicinity. I can now clear up this mystery. When the Beatles started playing, a retired army colonel phoned the police to demand that they “stop that bloody din” coming from the roof of a nearby building. He put his phone receiver outside his window so the duty sergeant could hear it for himself, and this witless Plod, being no aficionado of pop music, told a couple of fresh-faced constables to “get the Monkees off the roof”. This caused the hapless Bobbies to waste half an hour trying to evict the chimps from their vantage point (an impossible task given the comparative gymnastic abilities of humans and chimps). It took another phone call from the irate colonel to make the sergeant realise his error and redirect his troops to the Apple studios.
To be honest, I don’t blame Paul for preferring to hang out with rich people like himself. His fingers and toes got badly burned by Heather Millstone, who not only fleeced him for 30 million bucks but aired a lot of dirty linen that should have remained in the laundry basket. As we say in the jungle, if you swim with the crocodiles it might cost you an arm and a leg.
Labels: chimpanzees, money, Paul McCartney, sea cucumbers, The Beatles
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Planet of the Jackanapes
I got an email from someone asking me to comment on a new movie called Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
“Why are you asking me? – I’m not a film critic,” I wrote in reply.
The answer came back swiftly:
“No, but as one who claims to be a gorilla you ought to have an opinion on the way your species is portrayed in popular entertainment, given the subtle influence of such perceptions on public support for conservation and other related projects.”
This erudite statement deserved a carefully-worded response:
“Fiddlesticks and tiddlywinks!” I wrote, ending the debate decisively.
At the time, I thought it was a suitable riposte to a snooty lecture from someone whose email address was Elvis.Godzilla@gmail.com. But on later reflection, I had to admit that Mr Godzilla’s argument was sound. Gorilla Bananas must not be silent when humans invent stories about their hairy cousins. The gullible masses will believe any old tosh presented to them on a cinema screen, even if it involves three-legged orang-utans juggling dwarves between their feet.
It will be many moons before the film is screened in the Congo, so I had a look at the official trailer to get a flavour. It was utter bunkum and farce. The “apes” in it are walking in upright postures, making grumpy faces and speaking American English in throaty, menacing voices. In short, they are surly humans wearing furry costumes, under which they must be sweating like horses.
This suggests the movie is a classic example of what psychologists call “projection”. Humans put their own dark side in another species so they can externalise the evil and struggle against it without having to purge their own souls. Admittedly, a trailer can only tell you so much. There may also be tender scenes of apes feeding humans berries by hand, but that won’t put bums on seats. People will go to this movie to see the Big Bad Ape, so they can enjoy the exhilarating fear that humans feel when there is zero risk of getting a hunk of flesh bitten out of them.
On the subject of humans pretending to be apes, I recently overheard an American tourist call Justin Bieber “a despicable little chimp”. The uncouth youth has been fined $80,000 for throwing eggs at his neighbour’s house, which is an unwise prank for a stage performer to play. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword, and Bieber’s devoted fans may now have to endure the agony of seeing their idol get a facial omelette while he’s warbling away on stage.
Bieber’s growing band of beraters have sent a petition to the White House, demanding that he is deported to his Canadian motherland. The Obama administration has wisely declined to get involved. If Bieber were sent back to Canada, he could buy a house on the border and throw eggs at his neighbours in Michigan, while mooning at an American flag. Much better to keep him in the USA, where there’s a good chance some angry redneck guy will kick his ass.
Labels: Apes, chimpanzees, Justin Bieber
Monday, April 05, 2010
Iran's Space Program
The arrival of an Iranian tour party is making the chimpanzees nervous. The Iranians have recently sent worms and turtles into space, and the chimps are worried that they will be next. They haven’t forgotten how NASA ruthlessly press-ganged members of their species into rocket-service back in the 1960s. At least those hapless simians had the good fortune to blast off in the mighty Saturn-5, which was the Biggus Dickus of space exploration. The Iranian Kavoshgar-3 is more of a Naughtius Maximus by comparison, and might end up dumping its payload in Salman Rushdie’s back garden.
Our Iranian visitors are actually US residents who have nothing to do with the regime. The manager of the safari camp removed the porn channels from their rooms out of respect for their supposed religious beliefs. In less time than it takes to unpack a suitcase, a delegation of them gathered outside his office to demand restoration of the standard en-suite entertainment package. I must say I’d feel the same in their place. Although I have little interest in human porn, denying me the right to watch it would be viewed as an inhospitable act. We don’t stop humans watching apes mate in the wild, so they should extend the same courtesy to us.
I don’t want the chimpanzees to have an irrational fear of Iranians, so I’m holding a jungle symposium called “Understanding the Cultural Diversity of our Human Cousins”. It should be well attended, given that chimps are very curious about humans and love to mimic their habits. President Obama’s recent video message to the Iranian people shows he shares my philosophy. His speech was very good, although excessively tactful in avoiding any mention of beards. If most Americans believe that the Supreme Mullah in Tehran should be forcibly deprived of his whiskers, the Iranian people should hear it from the horse’s mouth. I hope the president uses his proposed “cultural exchanges” to send them the latest Gillette products. The Iranians are sure to take the hint.
As a gorilla, I am well qualified to be a mediator in human disputes of a tribal or sectarian nature. Back in my circus days, the 6th form of a local girls’ school was torn between two factions called The Virgins and The Tarts. Things had got very nasty when they asked me to intervene – hair was being pulled, cosmetics were being vandalized and tampons were being dipped in ink. So I went to the school and gave the girls a speech.
“Virgins! Tarts!” I exclaimed. “You are both essential to a healthy ecosystem, for Nature thrives on biodiversity! Without tarts, what appreciation would exist for a virgin’s maidenly blush? Without virgins, what gratitude would exist for a tart’s wanton lubricity? And yet, you are not so different! In every virgin is a quiescent tart who longs to abandon herself to the pleasures of carnal indulgence. In every tart is the memory of a fresh-faced virgin who shyly contemplated her own ripening womanhood. When your aberrant antagonism has abated, you will appreciate these truths and join hands in sisterhood.”They looked at me in a puzzled sort of way, which seemed to take some heat from their feud. I won’t pretend one speech solved everything. I did a fair amount of work with the girls in the following weeks, both jointly and individually. But we got there in the end.
Labels: chimpanzees, cultural diversity, Iranian space program, tarts, virgins
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Great Escape
Tourists have been asking me for my views on the great chimpanzee breakout from Chester Zoo in England. I tell them it is an event comparable with the mass escape of allied POWs from Stalag Lufters Drei (or whatever the place was called). The alpha males who organised the exploit no doubt modelled themselves on Steve McQueen, Dickie Attenborough and the other stars of The Great Escape. Not David McCallum, of course, who was too pretty for a chimpanzee. Nor Gordon Jackson, who was too Scottish.
“Does this prove that chimps and humans are closely related?” asks a man who could have passed for either.
“Yes,” I answer. “Like humans, chimpanzees deeply resent being imprisoned against their will. They despise the guards who withhold their fruit ration if they misbehave. They detest being stared at by fat children with ice cream all over their faces. Is it any wonder that they secretly dig tunnels and forge travel documents in preparation for a daring escape?”
“How do they keep their spirits up?” he asks.
“By whistling a catchy tune which expresses their cheeky defiance in the face of adversity,” I reply.
Having said all that, I’m glad they were caught soon after the breakout. A secure enclosure in a zoo is a far better place for them than the mean streets of Chester. Like most English towns, its public spaces are infested with surly adolescents, gossiping fishwives and undercover policemen on the lookout for kinky sex. Not a safe environment for chimpanzees by any stretch of the imagination.
Even if they’d made it to the countryside their position would have been hopeless. There are no neutral countries bordering England that would have offered them refuge. Scotland is actually an enemy country, but its menfolk have no love of chimps, viewing them as unwelcome competition. Wales, by contrast, is an ape-friendly nation, but its inhabitants are craven patsies of the English. Fugitives from across the border are hunted down by posses of squat-necked rugby players and handed over to the haughty minions of the Crown.
“Back you go, my hairy boyos!” they would have said to the hapless chimps. “The last time we played silly buggers with the English we got longshanked by King Edward I and what have you! Don’t involve us into your quarrels!”
The only human organisation that genuinely supports chimp freedom is NASA, which liberated a good number of them from the surface of the Earth back in the 1960s. Some people claim that the space-chimps were mere guinea pigs, but the same could be said of Armstrong and Aldrin, who were dispatched to the moon to show how bouncy its surface was. Firing a giant tennis ball into space would have achieved the same result, yet Neil and Buzz were determined to risk their lives as their chimp cousins had done.
This explains why the chimpanzees of the Congo celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission by getting pissed and raping a few baboons. Primate brotherhood is truly a wonderful thing.
Labels: Chester Zoo, chimpanzees, NASA, Wales
Friday, April 24, 2009
Meat for sex
Female chimpanzees will let you mount them if you feed them fresh meat. We jungle-dwellers have known this for ages, but it seems that human zoologists have only just twigged. One day they’ll discover something that hasn’t been going on since the last Ice Age. Media pundits have latched onto this revelation, believing it has far-reaching implications for homo sapiens. Men on the pull will doubtless soon be telling women about their meat-packed freezer compartments. They should note, however, that chimps do a lot of things that only work for chimps. Scratching your arse is a way of showing respect in their society.
The only man I know who has used meat as a seduction tool is Trevor Bumphries-Maddocks, the mercurial Welsh actor. He used to take supermarket checkout girls in Bridgend to Taffy Edwards’ Economy Steakhouse (motto: fresh meat from four-legged animals). He claims the food there “brought out the vixen in them”, which was apparently a euphemism for something sexual. The Welsh, however, are a law unto themselves in most respects. I doubt that meat consumption does anything to enhance the libido of women who prefer to couple in a horizontal position.
You certainly won’t get a female gorilla into bed by offering her meat. As well as being vegetarian, they are almost impossible to tempt with bribes. Male gorillas who beg or cajole them for sex are treated like bacteria. The safest method of having your way with them is to wait until they’re in season and flex your pecs suggestively. They’ll unusually initiate the mating sequence without any prompting. Trying to mount them in other circumstances is a dangerous game. Do anything they don’t like and they’ll squash your testicles like berries.
So what does Gorilla Bananas do if he’s feeling horny and none of his females has an engorged vulva? “He has a hand party!” I hear you cry. Not a bit of it! There is one infallible method of getting my ladies in the mood. In a word, it’s humour. When female gorillas start guffawing you can do whatever you want with them. It exercises the same muscles used in the sexual act and destroys their capacity to resist. As they lie on the ground cackling, it is the easiest thing in the world to turn them over and slip one in. I should emphasize that they don’t seem to mind this at all – indeed, I’m not actually sure they notice.
You must be wondering what I do to make them laugh. Do I tickle their sense of irony with my dry wit? Do I blow enormous raspberries and hop about like a frog? Do I tell them jokes about actresses and baboons? No, it’s a lot more straightforward that that. There is nothing funnier to a female gorilla than an outrageously camp gay man. The screaming queen, or a skilled impersonation of one, never fails to crack them up. So after putting on a flowery hat and red lipstick, I address them in the voice of the late John Inman, ejaculating utterances such as:
“Ooh, there’s never a man around when you need one!”
Not very dignified, I’ll admit, but far sillier things have been said in the hope of getting females to spread their legs. If it works, don’t knock it.
Labels: chimpanzees, female gorillas, screaming queens, The Welsh
