A Christmas Carol

The best thing about being a talking gorilla is using your talent for the benefit of others. The circus I worked for once hired a 20-year old lad called Dave as a casual labourer for the Christmas season. He was a bright chap to be working in such a menial job and we wondered why he wasn’t at university. It turned out that Dave’s father was self-made millionaire called Brian Pricklewood, a Yorkshireman with some peculiar views about life.

“University!” he exclaimed, when Dave had asked him for financial support. “Bunch of bloody idlers! Lecturers work a ten-hour week, shag their students and get paid to ponce off to summer conferences in Miami! Waste their time writing arty-farty stuff that never did owt for no one! I’ll not waste money on such foolishness. Get a job lad!”

Dave had recently got engaged to a lovely girl called Jill, but sadly they lacked sufficient funds to set up home together. When Dave told his father about his impending nuptials, the redoubtable curmudgeon was less than impressed.

“Marriage!” he spat out in disgust. “Your mother blighted the best years of my life and took me to cleaners int’ divorce court. I pay 500-a-week so she can live in style in Malaga and lie on her back for local Pedros. Get married if you want, but I’ll not throw good money after bad. You’re on your own lad.”

This was a bit hard on Dave, who hadn’t even been asking for money, but he wasn’t the kind of boy to hold grudges. Early in December, he and Jill asked his Dad over for Christmas lunch with Jill’s parents, who had a humble little home in Hackney. But the cussed Yorshireman wasn’t having any of it.

“Christmas!” he thundered. “Bloody scam! Shops charge a fortune for useless junk that gets thrown out on Boxing Day and then cut prices in half int' New Year. I’ll not give those buggers the satisfaction of being another one of their dupes. I’ll be at home watching Story of Rugby League on DVD.”

His home, as it happens, was a magnificent period building in Effingham, set within two acres of gorgeous greenery. I decided to pay him an unannounced visit on Christmas Eve. A couple of Dave’s workmates drove me to his place in their van and we arrived at one hour to midnight. The lads spent a minute or two admiring the Bentley parked in the drive, before the three of us went to the front door, which was answered by a butler in tails. For some reason the poor man nearly fainted when he saw us, so I told the boys to take him for a drive in the Surrey countryside and return in an hour or so.

I went inside and saw Pricklewood in the drawing room reading The Sporting Life, alternately puffing on a cigar and sipping from a glass of whisky. He didn’t notice me, so I crept up the majestic panelled staircase to the gigantic master bedroom. I sat down on a sturdy armchair with my back facing the window and waited for the Lord of the Manor to join me. The funny thing was he didn’t notice me until after he had brushed his teeth in the en-suite bathroom, taken his clothes off, and got on to the king-size bed with a tub of Vaseline and a life-size “Perfect 10” sex-doll. His eyes met mine just as he had turned the doll over on to its front.

“Fucking ‘ell!” he gasped. Realising he was naked in front of an unfamiliar primate, he threw the doll off the bed and got beneath the covers.

“DUCKWORTH, GET UP HERE PRONTO!” he shouted. “THERE’S A FUCKING ANIMAL IN THE HOUSE!”

“Duckworth is out viewing the Christmas lights,” I said calmly. “And there’s no point shouting because your nearest neighbour is half-a-mile down the road.”

“You can talk?” spluttered Pricklewood. “Who the ‘ell are you and why the fuck are you dressed in a gorilla costume?”

“It’s no costume, Pricklewood, I’m the real McCoy.” I then got down onto the carpet, grasped the feet of the armchair with my toes and lifted it off the ground. “How many humans do you know who can do that?” I asked.

“Ruddy ‘ell, I must be dreaming!” yammered the Yorkshireman. “Whaddya want?

“This is no dream,” I said, getting back into the chair. “You asked me what I want and I’ll give you a straight answer. I’m here to help you. Think of me as your guardian angel.”

“You’re a funny looking guardian angel!” squeaked Pricklewood. “I don’t keep cash int’ property if that’s what you’re after.”

I disregarded these tasteless remarks and got to the issue at hand. “Tonight is Christmas Eve, Pricklewood,” I said. “Would you care to share your plans for tomorrow with me?”

“Well if it’s any of your business, I was going to have a quiet Christmas at home,” he replied.

“I see,” said I. “You are aware, of course, that your son is engaged to be married to a beautiful, warm-hearted girl, who has asked you to have lunch with her family.”

“He told me, yes. I don’t begrudge him his choices in life but I’m not going to pretend I approve of something when I don’t,” said the Yorkshireman defensively. “How d’you know all this anyway?”

“I know many things Pricklewood. Do you believe me when I say I can see into the future – your future, in particular?”

“I might find that a bit hard to believe,” he replied.

“Oh you might, might you? Harder to believe than you’re having a conversation with a gorilla?”

“Fair point,” said Pricklewood meekly.

“The lovely girl who is soon to be your daughter-in-law is pregnant, Pricklewood. Her unborn child is a boy. This boy will be forced to live with his maternal grandparents because his parents can’t afford their own home. He will attend the local school and grow up talking with a cockney accent.”

“A cockney!” exclaimed Pricklewood, visibly shocked. “Dave would never allow that. He’ll send him to a boarding school up north.”

“Dave will not be able to afford the school fees, Pricklewood. He will be in a low-paid job, struggling to make ends meet for his young family.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said the Yorkshireman pensively.

“When young Brian enters his teenage years he’ll fall in with bad company,” I said. “He’ll join a gang that goes around mugging rich people.”

“They’ll name him Brian?” said Pricklewood, his eyes beginning to moisten. “That’s my own name!”

“One of Brian’s victims will be an elderly man,” I continued. “A female member of the gang will offer to let the old fellow grope her in an alley. Brian will creep up on him while he’s feeling her up and whack him on the head with a cosh.”

“The young bastard!” snorted the Yorkshirman. “I hope the police get him.”

“They will indeed get him, Pricklewood,” I replied. “The girl’s DNA is under the old man’s fingernails. She confesses to everything and is willing to testify. But then a complication arises.”

“What do you mean?” asked Pricklewood.

“The police visit the victim in his grand house in Surrey and tell him that the lad who mugged him was his own grandson.”

“NO!” shouted Pricklewood.

“And when they tell young Brian that he’s mugged his own grandfather the boy says: ‘If I’d known it was that old cunt I d’uv kicked ‘im in the ‘ed ‘n all.’.”

At this point, Mr Brian Pricklewood put his face in his hands and started sobbing. I walked over slowly, picked up a box of Kleenex from the bedside table and placed it on Pricklewood’s lap. He thanked me, blew his nose and addressed me in a voice breaking with emotion.

“Mr Gorilla,” he said. “Are these events you speak of the things that will be, or are they the things that may be?”

“The future is in your hands,” I replied. “Get into that Bentley of yours tomorrow morning and drive to Hackney. You’ve got the address. Give your son the support he needs to find his feet. Accept his lovely bride-to-be as your own daughter and cherish your future grandson as the dearest thing in your life.”

“I’ll do it,” sniffed Pricklewood. “But I haven’t even bought any presents for them and the shops are closed now.”

“You still have your chequebook, don’t you?” I replied, and for the first time that night I saw a smile break out on Mr Pricklewood’s face. I then heard the van pull up on the drive. “I’ll be leaving you now, Pricklewood,” I said. “I suggest you take a sleeping pill, otherwise you might find it difficult to get a good night’s sleep.” I walked over to the door and remembered one more thing. “Oh and Pricklewood, give Duckworth a generous tip in the morning. He’s had quite an eventful evening.”

Pricklewood was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more. He drove over to Hackney on Christmas Day, full of festive cheer, and presented his astonished son with a cheque with a large number of zeroes on it. Dave went to university, got a degree in mechanical engineering and became a designer of noiseless jet engines. He and Jill moved into a desirable four-bedroom house in Richmond-upon-Thames. Young Brian was sent to a boarding school in Yorkshire and did not speak with a cockney accent. And from that day onward, it was always said of Pricklewood that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

God bless Us, Every One!

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Cinderella: great human

Cinderella was a delightful young lady and I won’t hear a bad word about her. With what fortitude and restraint did she endure the bullying and arrogance of her ugly sisters! A pretty girl like Cinders could have lived in comfort and leisure had she been willing to surrender her virtue to a rich sugar daddy. But our noble heroine was determined to stay a maiden until the handsome prince came along and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. Are there many young women who would behave like that today? I very much doubt it.

I have less admiration for Prince Charming. What kind of ass attempts to identify a woman from her shoe size? If he and Cinders had been dancing cheek to cheek, couldn’t he have remembered her smell? That’s what a gorilla would have done. And why on earth would a man with eyes in his head tempt fate by allowing the ugly sisters to try on the slipper? He would have been perfectly within his rights to disqualify them on the grounds that the girl he had danced with was not a repulsive hag. It was down to sheer luck that he was not lumbered with one of those crones.

This is not to say, of course, that having an ugly mate is necessarily a bad thing. Any fan of female sporting events will confirm there is no correlation between the quality of a woman’s body and the prettiness of her face. My own research leads me to believe that most men are quite able to service a woman with unattractive facial features. There is no need for humans to couple face-to-face and many women prefer to do it in the dark anyway. What’s more, a man is much less worried about how he performs with an ugly woman, which has the paradoxical effect of improving his performance. Like a golfer or a tennis player, he plays better when he is relaxed and not thinking about what he is doing.

Had Prince Charming married one of the ugly sisters, they would almost certainly have mated successfully and produced a brood of royal kiddies. The only problem for the prince would have been his embarrassment on occasions of state when he and the princess were required to appear together in public. Having a wife with a face like a herring is like having a collection of Cliff Richard records – the music is fine once you get used to it, but you don’t want everyone to know about it.

The downside of such a development is that poor Cinders would have had to settle for a sugar daddy after all. Peter Stringfellow comes to mind as an obvious candidate for the job, in which case the fairytale would mutate into a version of Beauty and the Beast where the beast does not change into a handsome prince. Nor could she be certain that Stringfellow would leave her anything in his will. If I were Cinders’ agent, I would demand that he paid her a sizeable cash advance in return for her services as a concubine. It might just compensate her enough for being slobbered over by that hairy old dog.

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Diamonds are forever?

Economics is one of the hardest human sciences for an ape to master. Dr Whipsnade once showed me a diamond he had bought as an investment – he said it would probably end up on the ring finger of a princess. Although it was very pretty and quite dazzling when held up to the light, I have to admit that the novelty wore off after a minute or two. I couldn’t understand why high-ranking human females would be so keen to acquire a trinket like that and show it off on their finger. You can see much prettier patterns by looking through a children’s kaleidoscope.

Apparently it’s all to do with economics. The high-quality diamond is rare, which makes it very valuable, which means that you can exchange it for vast quantities of goods. Dr Whispnade estimated that the diamond he showed me could buy a million bananas, which is a lot of bananas. His explanation seemed satisfactory at the time, but on further reflection I began to have my doubts. It’s all very well saying that a diamond could be exchanged for a lot of bananas, but has anyone actually done so? Is there a documented case of such a trade? After an exhaustive search, I could find no such example, which led to me suspect that deeper forces are at work.

My belief is that women who are given diamonds have no intention of exchanging them for bananas – or anything else for that matter. Their wish is to display them as status symbols and otherwise keep them safely locked away. It is very important to the woman that everyone knows that the diamond was a gift from her mate – buying your own gem is apparently cheating. So what the diamond signifies is the opportunity cost that the male has been willing to accept in order to please the female. Its value is the bananas that the male has forsaken, rather than the bananas that the female could acquire.

Using a diamond in this way may be a well-established human convention, but it seems rather shallow to an ape. It may, in fact, indicate a rich husband rather than a particularly devoted one. Is the man who buys a diamond for his mate more likely to protect her from a crazed baboon or pick the nits from her fur? My suspicion is that the reverse is true – i.e. he hopes that the gift of the gem will absolve him of any obligation to provide her with dangerous or time-consuming services. But if this is so, how many women realise that their diamond is actually a compensatory down-payment for an inattentive husband? Misunderstandings such as this may explain why so many human partnerships end in acrimony and divorce.

From a gorilla’s perspective, the human male should stop fobbing off his females with sparkling stones and adopt more practical methods of showing devotion. The first activity I would suggest is petting. Although most women lack sufficient body hair to be given a good stroking, a foot massage may be an adequate substitute. If a man can regularly press a woman’s feet without getting bored, it probably means he will be a good mate to her. The other activity I would strongly recommend is killing a dangerous beast on her behalf. All primate females have a deep psychological need to be protected by their mate, and this element of courtship is an essential component of many romantic movies. Ideally, the creature killed would be a crocodile (see Crocodile Dundee), but for the less courageous man a big, hairy spider may be an acceptable substitute (see Annie Hall).

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Dick Dastardly: great human

Is it possible for a bad human to be great? Historians certainly seem to think so given the amount of attention they pay the likes of Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible. The path to greatness involves influencing large numbers of people, which can be achieved in many different ways – killing them is one method, terrorising them is another, and getting them to follow your example is a third.

Dick Dastardly was that rare example of a bad man who influenced people through the force of his example. Let’s start with that faux English accent of his. It’s clearly the voice of a weedy boy who got bullied at school and is now looking for revenge on a world that betrayed him. His manner of speaking was so evocative that it’s been copied by villain after villain in subsequent Hollywood movies. To this day, if you want to know who the baddie is in an American film or TV show, just look for the man whose speech patterns most closely resemble Dick Dastardly.

Dastardly’s accomplices also set the standard for what the villain’s henchmen are supposed to be like – the guiding principle is that they should be even more weird than the villain himself. His main side-kick is the impertinent dog Muttley, who evidently has nothing but contempt for his master, forever sniggering at his misfortunes and sometimes cursing him under his doggy breath. He’s clearly much smarter than the pea-brained Dastardly, so why does he stay with him? The answer, bizarrely, is that the dog has a peculiar fetish about getting medals pinned to his hairy chest. Dastardly’s other henchmen in his doomed flying escapades are simply too weird to be described adequately with words.

Dastardly has one lone virtue that’s essential for the bad guy in any TV show which runs over multiple episodes – he never gives up. He wakes up every morning believing that today is the day that the annoying pigeon will be plucked and served in a tasty pie. Wile E Coyote was doubtless inspired by Dastardly’s optimism in his own quest for the Roadrunner’s gizzard. This is an important lesson for the youth of today – however dumb and ineffective the bad guys appear to be, they may one day achieve their nefarious aims through sheer persistence. Thus, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and an unconquerable will to outlast the bastards until they give up.

Here’s the song from Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines.

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Mary Poppins: great human

An ape can pick up a lot of bad habits during infancy. That’s why we hairy apes have a minimalist approach to nurturing our young. We cuddle them, protect them and feed them, in the hope that they will grow up to become cuddlers, protectors and feeders. Human parents, of course, have far greater ambitions for their offspring. But in striving to mould their young they tend to make the most frightful blunders, causing the little scamps to grow up with a variety of vexatious foibles. So the job is often contracted out to a qualified nanny, who supposedly knows the ropes in the child-rearing field.

Now employing a nanny is no guarantee that your children will turn out alright. If she spoils them, they’ll grow up believing the sun shines out of their smooth little bottoms. And if she’s too stern with the boys, they’ll turn into the sort of men who make up the clientele of Zelda the Warrior Queen or Miss Whiplash. Rearing human infants is a highly subtle art, which is why the first-rate nanny is as rare as an anorexic hippo. And the one nanny who stands out as a giant in the field – practically perfect in every way, one might say – is Miss Mary Poppins.

The essence of the Poppins genius is the manner in which she exercises authority. Needless to say, she knows what’s best for the children entrusted to her care. But in getting them to do what they must, she never scolds them or gets into a battle of wills. Instead, she is a master of what Bruce Lee, the karate-chopping Chinaman, called “the art of fighting without fighting”. When the kiddies make a fuss, she will perplex them with a clever rhyme, possibly followed by a little song, which invariably beguiles the little imps into obedience. On rare occasions magic is employed as a shock and awe tactic. The result is that her charges are contented and well-behaved without recourse to the hairbrush on the backside or the pinch on the ear lobe.

The other key ingredient of the Poppins phenomenon is a quality noted by Moshe Dayan, the great Hebrew warrior – she never orders her troops into battle, she always leads them into battle. When the children take their medicine, she takes it too. She doesn’t have to tell them to be polite to Bert, the bizarre mock-cockney chimneysweep, because they follow her example. And when the children jump magically into cartoon-land, she leads the way, playing a full role in the subsequent merry-making rather than hanging back and chatting with the other nannies.

Being a woman of excellence, Mary Poppins is bound to have a few resentful detractors. They might ask, rhetorically, why a woman who loves children so much doesn’t have her own, hinting crudely at a same-sex preference. The answer, of course, is that she probably did have plans to raise her own family. She was certainly young enough to bear children and charming enough to attract many suitors. The main problem, I fear, would be finding a man worthy of her – one who could adore her body without fearing the power of her mind. Is there such a man?

To my male human readers I issue the following challenge: Would you be man enough to woo a Mary Poppins, to wine her, and dine her, and pleasure her where it pleases her?

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Tom Jones: great human

If there is one human who deserves the title of honorary gorilla it has to be Mr Tom Jones, the singing, swinging, warbling Welshman. From the very start, his songs were smash hits with apes and simians of all persuasions. Cheeky monkeys in the tree tops would scream “What’s new pussycat?” at any lions that passed below. The lions tended to ignore them, but it was good for morale to have a laugh at their expense. We knew in our hearts that Tom could out-roar any lion with that booming baritone of his – and rotate his rear-end in a fashion that few female apes could fail to admire.

Talent is a funny thing. Everyone can see it in a performer who is already famous, but few have the judgement to spot it in an unknown. It took a degree of persistence and self-belief for young Tom, the bricklayer from Pontypridd, to become Tom the hit-making sex-bomb, the only singer in the world capable of inducing female fans to hurl their moist panties at him when he was on stage. Perhaps Tom’s early confidence came from the fact that girls found him irresistible long before he hit the big time. And although he married very young, after impregnating a local lass, he always felt honour bound to indulge his female admirers to the fullest extent of their lustful fantasies.

After being discovered in one of his early infidelities, Tom was reputed to have answered his wife’s recriminations by saying:

“It’s not my fault, you know, they keep on asking for it.”

“So why don’t you say ‘No’ then?” thundered his wife.

“I can’t do that!” replied a visibly shocked Tom, “they’d think I was a poof!”

One has to acknowledge a certain genius in this line of argument, which was apparently put forward which such sincerity that his betrothed resigned herself to a marriage not bound by the normal human conventions. Mrs Tom Jones, first laid by the bricklayer some fifty years ago, remains devoted to a husband who has bedded more women than most other men stare at frustratedly during their entire lives.

Some might say that the ideal of manhood personified by Mr Tom Jones is a throwback to a bygone era, when men opened doors, paid dinner bills and wore the trousers until they wanted to take them off. My reply would be: “What of it?”. The “new man” may be fashionable in certain circles, but he doesn’t look like the kind of fellow who will hand-glide onto a craggy cliff-top to provide his woman with a box of extra dark chocolates with soft creamy centres. And if he can’t do that, he’s about as useful as a three-legged camel without a hump.

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Profanity on the Bounty

Swearing and cursing is one of those human activities that has no direct counterpart in the wild. Animals do make vocalised threats, it’s true, but always with the aim of warning off intruders. Statements of the kind “you are a cunt” are not used because they would serve no purpose. Telling a lion that he is a foul-breathed fucker may be accurate enough, but it would not hurt his feelings or cause him to change his immediate plans. In fact, it would be a complete waste of an insult.

For humans, of course, swearing serves various social functions, one of which is to relieve the feelings of the swearer. But this catharsis often comes at a high price. Consider the case of William Bligh of the Royal Navy. He ought to be remembered as a skilful navigator and fearless commander, mentioned in dispatches by Nelson for his bravery at the Battle of Copenhagen. Instead, he is famous for a tawdry soap opera enacted in the South Pacific that resulted in the loss of his ship to an upper class fop named Fletcher Christian. And it all happened because of Bligh’s habit of swearing.

Let it be said straight away that Bligh never called anyone a cunt. His preferred epithets were: “infernal scoundrel”, “contemptible thief”, “incompetent mongrel” and “cowardly rascal”, which in modern English would pass for measured and even affectionate rebukes. But this was not so in the late 18th century. Most unwisely of all, he would apply these descriptions to his fellow officers in front of the whole ship’s company, yet a short while later behave as if nothing had happened. Were one to write a book on human social conventions, this sort of thing would come high on the list of faux pas.

Yet thanks to the deeply ingrained discipline of British seamen, Bligh might have got away with his cursing had it not been for the events that occurred in Tahiti. As every film buff knows, the crew of the Bounty had an extended period of shore leave on that tropical island, where the native women were eager to offer them a full repertoire of carnal pleasures. Mr Christian was one who indulged himself to the utmost, and he may have been vain enough to believe some of the flattery that women employ on such occasions to maintain the stamina of their stud. Certainly, a man who has got used to remarks such as “Fletcher big white dick make Tahiti girl happy” is going to place service to King and Country lower down on his list of priorities.

This period of indolence and debauchery meant that the crew of the Bounty were in no fit mental state to resume their duties when the ship eventually set sail, far less accept the insults of the ship’s captain with British stoicism and restraint. So when Bligh called Christian “a coward” over some trivial incident, he was promptly cast adrift on a small boat, which he nonetheless brilliantly navigated to Timor.

Bligh was not a bad man by any means and his use of the cat ‘o nine tails was sparing by the standards of the day. But his cursing became so habitual that he lost all sense of the offence he was causing his colleagues. Perhaps there is a warning for bloggers here. Could they become so accustomed to the use of swear words in a humorous context that they forget the powerful effect of these phrases and expressions outside the community of their readers? I have a vision of a solitary bearded man in a lifeboat, desperately reading the vessel’s manual while receding into the wake of an ocean liner, whose stony-faced skipper is on the bridge, muttering about the riff-raff that can afford to go on cruises these days.

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Shaggy: great human

I was never a fan of Scooby Doo. This oversized mutt exemplifies some of the worst aspects of the human-pet relationship. He is forced – against his will - to participate in the investigation of various unsolved mysteries by insufferably pretentious children, who fancy themselves to be modern-day Sherlock Holmeses. And his role during these activities is either to amuse these children with buffoonish antics or allow himself to be patronized by them in the most irritating manner. His only constructive contribution appears to be the accidental discovery of one kind of clue or another, which usually occurs when he’s trying to make good his escape from imaginary ghosts or ghouls.

However one of the children – if indeed he be a child – behaves towards the dog in a manner that befits a true friendship between man and beast. The ginger-haired freak, Shaggy, is the only human who engages Scooby Doo in a partnership of equals. He has no qualms about sharing his fears with the dog and asking for his protection in times of danger. As Scooby Doo is almost as cowardly as Shaggy, this is a task he is ill-equipped to perform. But I give Shaggy credit for frankly admitting to his fears and placing his trust in the dog, unlike the other children who pretend to believe that rationality and diligence alone can protect them from the evils of man.

The camaraderie between Shaggy and Scooby Doo is best illustrated by their dining arrangements. They are both perpetually afflicted by ravenous hunger and highly susceptible to bribery with food. But contrary to the norms of human-pet interaction, there is no distinction between them in either the mode of eating or the type of food accepted. Scooby Doo will happily devour any sandwiches and cakes that are placed in his path, and Shaggy does not try to claim first right to them as a human. Similarly, Shaggy will gratefully swallow any “Scooby-snacks” that are thrown in his direction, even though these dog-biscuits were designed to suit the tastes of his canine friend.

As a gorilla of independent means, I have not found it too hard to get humans to treat me with the same consideration they would show a member of their own species. And if any human is difficult to convince on this matter, I can always force the issue by hoisting him upside down by his ankles and farting in front of his face. But I abhor unnecessary violence and would much rather solve these problems through dialogue and education. So I say to humans who want to treat their animal companions with respect: Learn from Shaggy!

I leave you with the Scooby Doo theme song. The last word of the third line of the song is “slipper”.

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The most evil human award

A correspondent tells me that my posts are unbalanced. Too much yin and not enough yang – or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, he has a point. I shouldn’t publish post after post about great humans without exploring the dark side of the naked ape. Otherwise my human readers might get complacent, which would do them no favours.

So after much thought, I have compiled the following short-list for the ignoble title of “Most Evil Human That Ever Lived” (MEHTEL):

[] Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany

[] Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union

[] Captain Black, Mysteron agent

Now some may argue that Hitler and Stalin are in a league of their own because of the millions they killed. This oversimplifies a complex reality. Hitler and Stalin couldn’t personally have killed millions of people. One should rather say that they and their supporters killed millions of people. So when it comes to assigning guilt, the foolish humans who followed these dictators and elevated them to the status of living gods must share the blame. The responsibility for the millions who died must be divided fairly amongst the millions who helped to kill them.

Once these facts are understood, it becomes apparent that Hitler and Stalin were morally not much worse than a gangster like Al Capone, even though the damage done by Scarface was insignificant by comparison. Like Hitler and Stalin, Capone and his gang also killed those whom they considered enemies. Now just suppose that in addition to being a gangster, Capone had been a brilliant orator with a seductive political philosophy who had lived in a lawless country thirsting for a strongman to put the house in order. Don’t you think that millions of people would have flocked to his banner? Don’t you think that he and his followers would have exterminated their perceived enemies just as ruthlessly as Hitler and Stalin?

We need to examine these issues carefully before making snap moral judgments about Hitler and Stalin.

Now let’s turn to Captain Black. In one important respect, he was much worse than the dictators. For unlike Hitler and Stalin, Captain Black was a traitor – and a traitor to the entire human race, not just to a particular nation. And not content with being an agent of menacingly hostile aliens from Mars, he had the nerve to retain the uniform and rank of an officer of Spectrum! The barefaced cheek of the man! Even Kim Philby had the decency to assume the rank of a KGB colonel on defecting to the Soviet Union.

Some may argue that Captain Black doesn’t belong on the list because of the low number of casualties he inflicted, but this would be a total misunderstanding of the Mysteron approach to warfare. Their strategy is to probe the enemy carefully, sending their agents to prowl about spookily in alleyways, treading on any stray cats that get in the way, until they have amassed enough intelligence. They will then launch a massive, overwhelming attack that delivers a knock-out blow from which there is no hope of recovery or retaliation. The entire human race will go phut in a single afternoon, leaving the Earth empty for colonization from Mars. Any resistance from that point onward would have to come from the animals, which is not a prospect I would relish. This clip, which may distress cat lovers, gives a taste of their vile treachery.

Well, I‘ve had my say on the candidates for the title of MEHTEL, and as you can see I have my own biases and preferences. I throw it open to the floor for debate.

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Robinson Crusoe: great human

Being marooned alone on an island would be a terrible fate for any social primate. A hairy ape might express his frustration by pissing in the ocean in a vain attempt to annoy the fish. Eventually, he might hammer his head against a tree trunk in boredom and despair. But Robinson Crusoe, although fully aware of and much saddened by his predicament, does not allow his spirit to be crushed. He uses the human desire for comfort to his advantage by busying himself with little tasks from which he derives a sense of achievement and purpose.

Although he does not mention it in his journal, it is barely conceivable that Crusoe could have gone without occasionally relieving his sexual tension. But we may concede this point without in any way accepting that such incidents had acquired the status of a cherished pastime, let alone a ruling passion. If a lower breed of human male had found himself in Crusoe’s position, one might imagine that his life would revolve around his daily wank. He would ration whatever lubricants he had salvaged from the shipwreck for use in his masturbatory activities. Tiring of self-abuse, the fauna and flora of the island would no doubt soon fall victim to his lust.

But Robinson Crusoe has a noble human trait: the ability to put the spiritual above the corporeal. He lives in a universe of hopes and dreams, rather than soaps and creams. When Man Friday emerges, his thoughts are of friendship with another human being rather than same-sex coupling. There is certainly no evidence that any kind of sexual activity occurred between them, and insinuations of this kind should be strongly resisted by those who honour the memory of Crusoe.

Lastly, we should note that when Crusoe is rescued he pulls together the threads of his old life without seeking celebrity or attempting to sell his story to a newspaper. A true alpha male does not prostitute the events of his life to the curiosity of the vulgar rabble. Instead, like Crusoe, he calmly puts his business affairs in order, while generously rewarding those who have helped him. He also delivers his enemies to the iron hand of justice, pending a fair trial and the hangman’s noose - may God have mercy on their souls.

I leave you with the Robinson Crusoe theme music.

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Fat women should straddle them

What should be done with the adolescent human male? Left to his own devices he is disruptive, rebellious and yearning with sexual desire. Allow him to socialise with his peer group and they will congregate in marauding groups looking for someone to victimize. In gorilla society, the young males are simply driven away by the alpha. They live a life on the margins until they are strong enough to maintain their own harem. Humans, it seems, are too soft hearted to do this. In any case, the young human male is probably quite unable to fend for himself in your complex society.

My preferred solution would be to force them to work as sex slaves for older women. These women would be unattractive spinsters, unable to find a mature mate, but harbouring the normal desires of the human female. They should also be big and fat enough to be able to overpower the young male and compel his obedience.

From what I understand about the young human male, he would be unable to avoid copulation, no matter how undesirable he found the woman. His dick more or less has a mind of its own when it is touched. The woman could just tie him to her bed, play around with him for a minute, and then straddle him from above to satisfy her lust. I feel that this kind of work experience would teach the young human male some important lessons about life – that he who lives by power alone may one day succumb to it, that endless copulation does not bring lasting happiness, and that fat women are human beings worthy of respect.

It’s a pity that life’s lessons so often have to be learned through unpleasant experiences, but unfortunately there is no easy way of brainwashing a youngster into good sense and maturity. The exception that proves the rule is Master Joe 90, and I leave you with his theme music.

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Troy Tempest - great human

A blog commentator once accused me of “sapiens-bashing”, implying that I had some sort of grudge against humanity. I emphatically deny it: the whole point of this bog is to promote a spirit of camaraderie within the ape family by opening a channel of communication with my dear hairless cousins. I have the deepest admiration for more than a dozen humans, whom I shall eulogize on this site in an exciting new great humans series.

Let’s start the ball rolling with Troy Tempest, captain of a submarine called Stingray, and star of a television programme of the same name. Captain Tempest is brave and resourceful, virtues also found in many hairy apes. But he has one quality that is uniquely human: he is chivalrous.

Proof of this is seen in his conduct toward Marina, an aquatic woman with whom he has fallen in love. Marina is a mysterious beauty who can breathe underwater but is unfortunately mute, making it impossible for Captain Tempest to court her in the customary human fashion. But it would have been quite easy for him to force his attentions on her, secure in the knowledge that whatever her feelings about rough sex she would have been unable to complain afterwards. I admit that a male gorilla would offer no special consideration to a mute female in a similar situation: he would wait patiently until she was in season and then mount her without compunction. But the lovely Marina escapes such a fate thanks to the noble instincts of the gentle Captain Tempest, who adores her from afar – or from arm’s length at any rate.

In these more cynical times, there are some who might deride Captain Tempest as a sexually repressed buffoon, who in denying his own needs also prevents Marina from attaining proper womanly fulfilment. But I sense a deeper human wisdom, a realisation that some things are not meant to be, and that no good can come from mating with a woman who smells ever so slightly of fish.

I leave you with the song played at the end of the TV show, a crooning ode to Marina that might have been composed by Captain Tempest himself.

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Why this blog?

Warmest Greetings to all my naked little primate cousins in cyberspace. Let me introduce myself. I am a mature male gorilla who mis-spent many years of his youth with a travelling circus, performing tricks for your kiddies and pulling rude faces at your grannies. Although the work was as boring as hell, it gave me the chance to observe closely what you big-headed ape-men call “civilization”. Don’t get wrong. I am no enemy of your species and have many human friends whom I visit from time to time. My only wish is to offer you some friendly advice from an outside perspective. Like when you humans pay someone you don’t know to listen to all your personal problems and tell you it’s not your fault because someone groped you when you were a child. Only in this case it’s free. A gorilla with a harem and an unlimited supply of fruit and veg has no need for money.

Now, what is the problem with your lives? Well, it seems to me, my hairless little chums, that you have lost touch with reality. Instead of living, you talk about living, and even talk about people who do nothing but talk about living. A lot of you, for example, spend hours and hours reading story books. Now the stories may be full of action, with fighting, and mating, and fighting about mating. But reading about this stuff is no substitute for actually doing it. If you were really doing what you were reading about, there would be NO NEED to read about it! Reading about it is just a way of imagining you are doing it when you’re not! All this unreality leads to what you humans call the “stress of modern living”. But I call it the “DISTRESS of modern living”. You skulk about with long faces, repressing the universal primate instinct to dance from place to place while shaking your backsides and fondling each other. We hairy apes have an unkind description for you: UPRIGHT AND UPTIGHT.

So the aim of this blog is to help you to unwind and laugh at yourselves. And if my efforts in this direction cause just one of you to loosen up and discover the inner ape struggling to get out, it will all have been worthwhile.

Gorilla Bananas

P.S. This blog is being written with the assistance of Dr Larson Whipsnade, my business partner and English tutor.

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