Reach for the sky

Dr Whipsnade’s chauffeur once tried to tease me about the final scene of that abominable movie King Kong.

“A gorilla climbing up the Empire State Building!” he jeered. “Very Freudian! Do you think it was penis envy, GB?”

“My dear fellow,” I replied, “the author of the screenplay was a man, not a gorilla. I suggest you delve into your own subconscious for the symbolism of that peculiar event.”

“Are you saying we have an unconscious desire for a gorilla to climb up our cocks?”

“Probably not as a rule, although most things are possible in human sexual fantasies. You are forgetting, however, that the building was quickly surrounded by warplanes, which the ape did his best to swat away. They were obviously the dreaded agents of a powerful castration complex.”

“But I don’t see how the gorilla fits into it.”

“It’s quite simple. The human male is terrified of mating in the open air, fearing that his penis will be bitten by mosquitoes or other flying insects. He imagines, therefore, that a benevolent gorilla (possibly a father figure) will defend his organ from their attacks.”

“You mean King Kong took all those bullets to save our dicks from harm? He’s even more noble than I thought!”

“Indeed, although this would never happen in real life. We gorillas have better things to do than protect a man’s penis. If you ever tried to satisfy your lust in the jungle, either with a willing partner or more probably through self abuse, there’s not a gorilla in Africa that would guard your groin. Your todger would have to fend for itself.”

“I’ll bear that in mind the next time I’m having sex in the jungle!”

I smiled at the man and pointed at Dr Whipsnade’s niece, who was waiting in the hallway to be driven to a social function. I might have added that an insect in search of a quick snack would have no particular reason to home in on a man’s private parts – there are plenty of other appetising targets on his body. But it wasn’t my job to deal with a chauffeur’s irrational psychosexual fears. The shrink must eat, just like the mosquito, and should not be deprived of an honest living.

I thought of the above conversation on learning that the Russians are planning to build the tallest skyscraper in Europe, news which prompted me to scratch my chin in puzzlement. Isn’t the point of tall buildings to make the best use of scarce land in cramped conditions? Mother Russia is surely the one country on Earth where floor space is not an issue. One suspects this tower is intended to be a defiant virility symbol, signalling to the world that the Russian nation can still get it up.

It all seems rather vulgar and nouveau riche in a country famed for its suffering masses. Perhaps a more fitting monument would be a giant sphere made of candy for children and pensioners to lick. They could call it “Hitler’s Missing Ball” as an ironic reference to the Nazi dictator, whose remains are scattered in laboratories throughout Russia.

The problem with all these skyscrapers is that they’ve gotten too tall. I appreciate a good vantage point as much as the next ape, but if everyone at ground level looks like an ant you can’t see what the devil is going on. That’s why I have always been an ardent admirer of the blimp. These great gas-filled tits are wonders of the modern world, and it amazes me that everyone is so blasé about them. People go to football matches and say “Oh, there’s a blimp” as if they’re looking at a camel having a shit.

Maybe I should acquire my own Bananas Blimp. As well as using it for sight-seeing, I would hire it out for mid-air parties and orgies. For an extra fee, I would let the revellers fly over golf courses to jeer and moon at the players below in their silly checked trousers. There’s no point towering above people unless you can make them feel small.

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The Italian Knob

An Italian visitor declares that Silvio Berlusconi is the biggest “pezzo di merda” in Western Europe. I feel obliged to reprimand him for his intemperate outburst.

“Sir, your remark is uncharitable for the Christmas season. Western Europe is full of enormous pezzi di merda. Perhaps Signor Berlusconi is the biggest one in Italy, although he has tough competition, what with the Mafia and Lapo Elkann.”

There follows a civil exchange of views in which our guest cites the following examples of objectionable conduct by the Italian prime minister:

1) He wore a headscarf following a hair transplant operation, giving the excuse that he had whimsically decided to dress like a pirate.

2) He discussed his wife’s extramarital affairs with other European politicians.

3) He complimented the American president-elect on his tan.

I offer no mitigation for the first complaint. The leader of a civilised nation should never give succour to pirates, even if it is limited to copying their sartorial habits. We quickly dismiss the possibility that he had converted to Islam and was wearing the hijab. A hedonistic fellow like Berlusconi would never give up wine purely to adopt a particular form of headdress.

On the second allegation, I am far more inclined to leniency. Frankly, I can’t see much wrong in gossiping about your estranged wife’s sex life, even if the aim is to divert attention from your own debaucheries. A cuckold has his rights, and it wasn’t as if he was kissing-and-telling or revealing bedroom secrets. Indeed, his behaviour may have done much to dispel the unpleasant stereotype of the jealous Latin lover, chasing his rival with a meat cleaver.

On the third point, I am not sure what to think. Barry Obama certainly has a fine-looking tan, but drawing attention to it may be tactless. I know enough about humans to be aware that a hue obtained from a visit to the tropics is crucially different from a congenital complexion. All the same, I sense that Barry is the kind of man to take such remarks in his stride and give the wag making them a smack on the back for his impudence. He certainly has the sun-tanned look of a coffee-commercial actor. Perhaps he should star in such an advertisement with the Secretary of State presumptive, to help her pay off her campaign debts. Imagine them together on a yacht, Barry loitering on deck with his shirt unbuttoned as Hillary brings him light refreshment in a bikini:

“Mmm-hmm! You sure make a mean cup of coffee, Hilldog!” he might say after savouring a long sip with his eyes closed.

I hear that the hotels in DC are fully booked for Barry’s inauguration in January. I expect they’re all terribly excited about the speech he is going to make. I hope he comes up with some new material rather than rehashing all the old stuff about “change, we can do it, yes we can”. If I were his speech writer, I’d make sure Britney Spears got a mention after all the trouble she’s been through. It’s very easy to criticise a woman for exposing her shaven cha-cha to photographers, but don’t forget that she was driven to it by her ex-husband, a worm so disreputable that even other worms find him slimy.

Never have I witnessed a celebrity divorce where the blame was so much on one side. Had I been the presiding judge, I would have sternly rebuked the repulsive rapster before plucking him like a Christmas fowl.

“Federline,” I would have said, “you are a talentless bounder! I hereby give full custody of the children to Miss Spears. You must also give her all your assets, including the clothes you are wearing. Officer of the court, strip this man at once! Leave his briefs on, though, he has caused enough offence for one day.”

Anyway, I hope that President Obama finds a job for Britney in his administration. Nothing too important, just a little something to allow her to regain her pride and present the middle finger to her critics. Given the state of her nether regions, ambassador to Brazil might be a good post.


The Japing Ape wishes his readers a Merry Christmas and will return in one week.

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Stolen boobs, wet pussy

Last week, an Australian tourist asked me to pose for a photograph wearing a pair of joke breasts. I grinned and picked my teeth before answering.

“My respect for the human female prevents me from colluding in the mockery of her milk dumplings,” I said. “If you require a humorous memento, I will take a picture of you being groomed by lady gorillas.”

He declined my offer, and the incident would have merited no further concern had I not heard news of a mysterious theft. It seems that 130,000 inflatable bosoms, ordered by an Australian men’s magazine, have disappeared en route from Beijing to Sydney. Let us put to one side the question of whether producing comedy boobs on an industrial scale is an appropriate use of resources in the current economic climate. Property is property, and if our Australian visitor has been handling stolen goods – or even buying them opportunistically on the black market – he is certainly guilty of a serious offence.

Should I report him to the Australian authorities? I think not. Joke breasts notwithstanding, the man is our guest. He has eaten our salt, sniffed our pepper and contributed a generous sum to the economy of the Congo Basin. Admittedly, a considerable portion of that sum might have been earned from the illegal bosom trade, but is that our fault? Economic activity cannot grind to a halt because a handful of customers have acquired their wherewithal from shady dealings.

Human jurisprudence is a tricky business, make no mistake. Back in my circus days, I remember the case of a clown’s stolen breakfast kipper. The guilty party turned out to be a cat, who had entered the clown’s trailer through an open window and departed hastily with the fish in its mouth. The clown was caught off guard while doing his stretching exercises, but was able to identify the culprit as one of our camp followers. After apprehending the feline bandit, he took the highly unusual step of putting it on trial. The clown himself took on the roles of judge, prosecutor, defence counsel and jury.

I interrupted the proceedings near the end. As the cat fidgeted restlessly inside a cage, the clown put on a judge’s wig and readied himself to pass sentence. The vengeful buffoon would have hanged the animal had I not intervened on its behalf. Fortunately, my powers of persuasion impelled the judge to announce a brief recess. I then made the following points in the laconic style of Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men:

(1) the cat had only been following its instincts;

(2) the clown had left the window open;

(3) the trial would be invalid without an independent defence counsel and jury.

We eventually settled on a plea bargain: the cat would be drenched with a bucket of cold water before being set free. It was the best I could do for it in the circumstances and it suffered no serious harm from its chastisement. No physical harm, that is, I cannot speak for its psychological condition. I also extracted a solemn pledge from the clown not to seek further vengeance or harass the animal in any way.

That episode taught me a lot about humans. They love to express liberal sentiments about justice and compassion until they’ve been mugged – then they become hanging judges.

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Christmas shopping

An English tourist asks me if I’m keen on internet shopping.

“No, by God!” I reply emphatically. “In the first place, the monkeys would steal the goods I ordered. In the second place, there is nothing I would wish to order.”

“There must be something you want!” he exclaims. “Even gorillas need their toys.”

“It’s not a question of toys, my good man, but of trust! Didn’t you hear of the scoundrels who were arrested for selling fake penises on the internet? May they languish in gaol until they repent of their phallic fraud!”

“Seems a bit harsh,” he remarks. “If impersonating a cock is an imprisonable offence, half the male population of Dagenham should be doing time.”

Not being familiar with Dagenham, I decide to let him have the last word. I’m sure the place is nothing like as bad as he implies. All the same, I’ll remember to avoid it the next time I’m in England. Why take a chance?

It seems that a lot of people are using the internet as a less stressful way of doing their Christmas shopping. Thankfully, we don’t bother with such soulless chores in the jungle. Every Christmas, I present the manager of the safari camp with some freshly picked fruit and he gives me a portrait photo of his wife in return. A very good one, I should add. Someone must be pinching her bottom to get such expressions out of her. Anyway, these friendly gestures of seasonal goodwill do away with the need for vulgar commercialism and its attendant cash transactions.

I’m sorry to say that no similar custom existed in my circus days. Being the highest-paid performer, I felt obliged to splash out on Christmas gifts for my colleagues. After some vexing experiences in department stores, I hit upon the perfect solution in the form of Dr Whispnade’s goldsmith, one Joos ‘Juicy’ de Villiers. Born in South Africa, he fled the horrors of the apartheid regime in the 1970s and settled in a modest home in Mayfair. There was also a pending warrant for his arrest on smuggling charges, which he assured us were cooked up by the state security police to punish him for “helping the blicks” (as he put it).

Juicy’s speciality was gold coins, but not the ones issued by governments. He would mint you custom-made specie with any engraving that took your fancy. Being an imaginative ape, I designed an exquisite collection of ‘Bananarands’ to give as Christmas presents. The ladies loved coins with romantic inscriptions, e.g. a sleeping maiden beneath the epigram Your Head Forever On My Hairy Chest. The clowns preferred kinky ones, e.g. a drag performer with the words Old Man’s Petticoat inscribed thrice around the edge.

The wonderful thing about those gifts was the sentimental value they rapidly acquired. It soon became apparent that no one would sell their coins unless faced with the most abject penury. To this day, I know of a retired clown who refuses to part with his Bananarands to buy a new set of dentures. He would rather live on gruel and mashed potatoes than sell them for the handsome sum they would now fetch. Such honest devotion would have surely brought a tear to Scrooge’s pitiless eye. Think of that clown when you stagger away from this year’s Christmas lunch table, with bloated belly and giddy head. A human who values a treasured gift above false teeth is an example to us all.

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Leader of the pack

I hear that Dian Fossey’s old flame Titus has recently appeared on British TV. This silverbacked rascal rose to fame in Rwanda, his every move watched by a succession of female naturalists who fell hopelessly in love with him. Titus, you see, is one of those gorillas who can charm the knickers off a woman. He just gazes deeply into their eyes and they think he is noble and wise and a lot of other things he most certainly isn’t. Not bad for an ape who mates with his hands clasped behind his head. The profusion of words that these ladies have written about him can be summed up in the lyrics of a famous song:

They said he was bad
But I knew he was sad
That’s why I fell for the leader of the pack
(Vroom! Vroom!)

For my own part, I always take pains not to arouse the amorous feelings of female zoologists. Whenever one of these women appears with notebook in hand, I slip on a pair of dark glasses to avoid seductive eye contact. After formally introducing myself, I offer to check her notes for accuracy. One thing leads to another and I usually end up counselling her on personal matters, which puts our relationship on a professional basis. It seems that these ladies often develop an interest in gorillas after becoming disenchanted with men. Having been led down the garden path by deceitful hairless ones, they dream of being led up a tree by an honest hairy one. Or so they imagine. I make it my mission to put them straight on a few home truths about male gorillas, so they leave the jungle a little less starry-eyed than they entered it.

In some ways, of course, we are more reliable than men. One thing we would never do is secretly film our trysts with a lady in order to blackmail her. The latest woman to fall victim to this contemptible scam is Frau Susanne Klatten, Germany’s wealthiest woman (and a right little raver between the sheets, so they say). I greatly admire her for refusing to pay her extortionist a penny and instructing the local constabulary to frogmarch the miserable cur to the nearest gaol. May he be tarred and feathered until he resembles Mother Goose.

After an experience like that, I wouldn’t blame Frau Klatten for going off men completely. There is only so much chicanery that a lady can take before losing interest in suitors of her own species. It must be difficult for a well-to-do woman to have healthy physical relations with men who’d rather be loosening her purse string than her g-string. Alas, these despicable adventurers swarm around rich ladies like flies near a honey pot.

It goes without saying that Susanne would receive a warm welcome if she visited my band in the Congo. I’d extend her every courtesy and show her the glories of the African landscape from a suitable vantage point in one of our sturdiest trees. I don’t speak German, but when ape meets woman in the glow of a tropical sunset a few grunts are all that’s required to capture the mood of the moment. If she later insisted on writing a fat cheque to fund our worthy conservation efforts, I might find it difficult to refuse her generosity – these successful career women are used to having their way. Gorilla Bananas is no gigolo, but he knows when to bend with the breeze.

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Icelandic Saga

Iceland’s red-nosed natives are protesting that they’re not terrorists. Did anyone actually accuse them of being so? Terrorists or not, they obviously have a guilty conscience about something. The ringleader of the movement is a photographer called Thorkel Thorkelsson. It sounds like the name of one of those rude characters who rowed about in a longboat looking for places to loot and pillage. A man of such ancestry ought to keep a low profile to avoid re-opening ancient wounds. Maybe they should change the slogan on their placards to “We are no longer terrorists!” They won’t win any sympathy by overstating their case.

I know next to nothing about Iceland and have no wish to stir the pot of discord or fan the flames of unrest. The only Icelander I ever spoke to was a pretty little woman I met in a park in London. She walked up to me while I was reading a comic and spoke to me in one of those sing-songy Nordic voices.

“I have had sex with Elvis.” she said.

“No you haven’t,” I replied. “You are far too young to have done that. There’s no point trying to impress people with blatant falsehoods.”

She seemed taken aback by my curt repudiation of her claim.

“I am not too young!” she insisted. “I am 22 years. That is not too young to have sex!”

“It is too young to have done it with Elvis!” I countered. “When he died, the gleam in your daddy’s eye had not yet become a wet spot on your mummy’s panties. I hope you’re not one of those silly people who thinks that Elvis is still alive and composing rock ballads with Buddy Holly somewhere in Wyoming.”

“Not EL-VIS!” she cried, doing a little jig to emphasize her point. “EL-VES! I have had sex with EL-VES!”

Her funny little accent had caused me to misconstrue her meaning. However the amended assertion was only slightly less far-fetched.

“Have you indeed?” I said. “Please describe these so-called elves on whom you bestowed your carnal favours. Men of low character often use deception to smooth the path of seduction. The impersonation of elves might be yet another devious tactic employed for that end.”

“Elves are tall, beautiful people with blue eyes and blond hair. They can make themselves invisible and are very gentle lovers. To have sex with an elf is like being licked by a hundred tongues.”

Had I been feeling sarcastic, I might have congratulated her on knowing what it feels like to be an ice-lolly in a bus full of Norwegian tourists. But I had grown rather fond of this earnest little madam and her elvish fantasies, so I decided to adopt a more avuncular tone. She told me that her name was Hallgerdur and that she planned to write a book about her sexual adventures with elves. I advised her to test the water by first documenting her experiences in a blog, and I’m pleased to say that she acted on my suggestion.

These Icelanders are certainly an odd bunch. I put it down to living on a rocky island at the edge of the world. Humans in such far-flung locations often adopt strange habits to make people notice them. New Zealand is another place inhabited by a weird collection of humans. Many years ago, I remember seeing a TV clip of a Maori exposing his rump to the Queen of England, there on a state visit. It seemed an utterly futile act – the Queen had spent her entire life ignoring bottoms and certainly wasn’t going to inspect one that wasn’t part of her official itinerary.

When I later mentioned this incident to a New Zealander on safari, he said that the man had been protesting about the annexation of his ancestral land by an officer of the British Crown. Being a fair-minded ape, I revised my opinion of him. You can’t blame a fellow for mooning at people to draw attention to the theft of his property. If any henchman of the Queen of England stole my land, she’d be sniffing my hairy arse for breakfast, lunch and supper.

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A new era?

I am surprised to see a white-haired, white-suited American gentleman at the safari guesthouse. I ask him whether he has submitted his ballot by post.

“No member of my family has participated in a presidential election since Mr Lincoln ran for office in 1860,” he declares in a wheezy Southern drawl. “Any poll that could make that long-legged Yankee jackanape its winner is no better than a pig-in-the-poke auction at a carnival.”

I suck my teeth and nod, as if his views were widely held among the gorillas of the Congo. It’s best to humour eccentrics when you’re tending bar. I once served an Italian who said that Mussolini was the greatest of men. He boasted that he’d licked the fingers of Il Duce’s granddaughter when she gave him her hand to kiss. Imagine being proud of something so yucky! I wouldn’t have done that if she’d just eaten Chicken McNuggets. As for President Lincoln, I have nothing against the man. He made a number of clever remarks in his career and was assassinated through no fault of his own.

So it looks like Mr Obama has won. Call me a sentimental ape, but I’d always rather hoped that Sidney Poitier would be America’s first black president. What a noble fellow he played in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner! My favourite bit was when he told Spencer Tracey that he’d ditch Little Miss Muffet if the old curmudgeon so much as whispered a word of disapproval. Manners of that sort are rare these days, even in the most exalted circles. President ‘Kiss-My-Willy’ Clinton would have probably asked the girl’s father to buy her a pair of knee-pads as an engagement present.

I can’t help sighing wistfully at all these fresh-faced young Americans who expect the world to love their country now that Morgan Freeman Junior is headed for the White House. If only life were that simple! They should consider what would have happened if Dirty Harry had started sweet-talking everyone and inviting them to settle their differences with him amicably. He might have initially impressed a few wishy-washy types in the DA’s office, but the carping would have resumed the very next time he fired his 44-Magnum in anger. As for the hoodlums and assassins, they would have hated him all the more for behaving like a pussy.

I’m not saying that President Obama has to punk anyone out himself to prove a point – that would be undignified. But he ought to make a few strong appointments to send the right signals. My recommendation for the top job at the Pentagon would be Oscar ‘Mad Coyote’ Johnson, the big cat trainer from Nevada. He was seconded to our circus in ’95 and the lions used to piss themselves whenever he entered their cage. He remains the only human I’ve ever seen kick a full-maned adult in the posterior. On getting the defence portfolio, he’d take the first plane to Afghanistan in full circus gear – I assure you that he'd unravel every turban in Paktia province.

Yet when all is said and done, the fate of a great nation lies not in the palm of any one man, nor even in his navel or armpit. From sea to shining sea shall the people renew the cryptic chords of union. The granite-faced farmer of Vermont; the powder-faced hoochie of LA; the folks in between with the big, wobbly bottoms – together they shall bring forth a new birth of shopping malls and condos for the honest real estate speculator to chance his remaining dollars on. And given the current state of the market, that would be no bad thing. E pluribus unum poonam bajwa as we say in the Congo.

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Quantum of tookus

Wonderful to see my friend Danny Craig doing his Action Man stuff in the latest Bond flick. How far he has come from the whiny insecure actor who came to see me after signing on with Madam Broccoli.

“I’ll be another George Lazenby!” he wailed. “The critics will pan me and the actresses I kiss will eat garlic!”

“Don’t talk rot, Danny!” I cried. “The critics will worship you – and if any actress dares to eat garlic before you smooch her, stick a funnel in her mouth and pour in Listerine until she chokes!”

Thus reassured, Danny went on to do marvellous things in Casino Royale, jumping about like a Mexican bean and allowing his gonads to be whipped for Queen and country. Quantum of Solace is destined to be an ever bigger hit, not least because of the greater variety of totty for Bond to exert his loins upon. There’s a love scene in the film which I had a modest role in choreographing. During the shoot, Danny phoned me to say that he’d soon be planting kisses on the naked back of Miss Gemma Arterton, his delectable auburn-haired co-star:

“All the way down from her neck, GB!” he boasted excitedly. “Not bad, eh? It beats running like a hare in the action sequences!”

“All the way down!” I exclaimed in horror. “No, Danny, no! James Bond does not kiss arse, no matter how peachy and succulent! You must put your foot down!”

“But I don’t actually kiss her arse!” he protested. “Obviously they’ll cut before I get there or we’ll never get a 12A rating!”

“It doesn’t matter, Danny,” I replied. “Even implying that James Bond smooches butt is an absolute no-no. You must protect the integrity of the character for yourself and future generations of fans. Please insist on starting at the small of her back and working your way upwards.”

“You could be right,” he mused. “I’ll probably strain my neck going all the way down. Going up will give me a better posture and I’ll finish in shot.”

Those of you who’ve seen the movie will know that Danny acted on my advice. His mouth travels up Miss Arterton's spine while remaining a safe distance from her ravishing rump. Having said that, I have my doubts about Bond nibbling a woman's body like a gigolo – he’s obviously not a man for fannying about when he's got a lady where he wants her. I’m not convinced that any foreplay is actually necessary: the mere prospect of being pumped by 007 should bring a woman to within a single penetrative thrust of orgasm. Female agents of a more belligerent persuasion might feel the earth move if he forced them against a wall and stroked their crotch vigorously with his Walther PPK. Not very true to life, admittedly, but very much part of the fantasy. A man who cheats death fives times a day shouldn’t have to fiddle about with a lady’s bits and pieces to get her in the mood.

Although I love the Bond films, I have to say that my females are not the least bit impressed by 007 and his macho posturing. As well as being insufficiently hairy for their taste, his arms are too short for the kind of games they enjoy. They also assume he must be infertile, having mated with countless women without fathering a single child. This makes him little better than a eunuch to a female gorilla. They are intrigued by his gadgets, though, and were very fond of the late Desmond Llewellyn, who played ‘Q’. Age is no barrier to being a babe magnet in the jungle if your equipment is up to scratch.

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Bare market

I hear that Hugh Hefner got a surprise on his 82nd birthday. A beaming Pamela Anderson, appropriately dressed in her own birthday suit, presented him with a cake. I can’t imagine a sweeter tribute for the old lecher. Photographs of the event show Pammy’s bust looking a lot less globular than usual. Has she finally done the decent thing and had her implants removed? Any hot dog would now be proud to be sandwiched between those baps. It’s a pity Hef was too shy to put his head between them and say “hooey-hooey-hooh!”. I now feel a twinge of regret that I turned Pammy down when she visited the Congo last year. She had applied to become an honorary gorilla, if you recall.

I’m not convinced by the argument of Playboy aficionados that Hef is living every man’s dream. Spending the daylight hours in pyjamas and a dressing gown sounds terribly lethargic to me. Some might say that a man in a house full of dolly birds doesn’t need to go anywhere, but what’s the point of being a stallion if you never have to chase the mares and corral them into the paddock? I wonder if the playmates are really happy about Hef creeping around the place in his bedroom slippers. A woman needs to have a few hours in the day when she can take off the make-up and break wind freely.

I must admit I’ve never had a subscription to Playboy. Every issue supposedly contains at least one penetrating article, but who can be bothered to hunt for it amid all the pictures? As for the centrefolds, I refuse to inspect them unless someone first tells me where the staples are located. Body-piercing is anathema to gorillas and I’d be very annoyed if any of the good bits were obscured. I actually prefer the bunny girls to the models. As cocktail waitresses, they have an impressive knowledge of beverages and their cotton-tails can be used to mop up spills. Having said that, I have no idea why any male customer whose name isn’t Bugs Bunny would find their costumes sexy.

Hef’s latest brainwave is to invite lady bankers who’ve fallen on hard times to pose nude for the magazine. Exploiting the carnage in Wall Street is a very shrewd move – if I were a vulture, I’d send my chicks to Hef for lessons in advanced bone-picking. I hope the old boy takes a Viagra pill when they visit the mansion so he can do to them what they’ve been doing to the country. Actually that’s unfair, I was just recycling an old Woody Allen joke. The real villains, of course, are their male bosses who hogged all the bonuses in the good times. Sadly, there are very few people outside of a high-security gaol who would pay to see them naked.

One can only hope that pictures of these talented women in the buff will cheer the nation in its hour of crisis, much as Dame Vera Lynn kept the British pecker up during World War 2. The American working man needs all the encouragement he can get in these difficult times, and photos of female bankers displaying their triple-A assets may yet stiffen his resolve. As for Hef, it’s about time he groomed a younger stud to take his place at the mansion. Does Warren Buffet have what it takes?

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Gender politics

The dismissal of Dr “Beetroot” Msimang has been greeted with much rejoicing in South Africa, but I can’t help feeling sorry for the woman. The former health minister was demoted to presidential masseuse after failing to shake off the ignominy of claiming that garlic was a cure for AIDS. She must have confused the disease with vampires, who also infect the blood of their victims. Let us hope that she follows the example of Mr Profumo in gradually restoring her good name by eating humble pie and working for charitable causes. Probably best to stay clear of AIDS charities though.

Looking at things with a gorilla’s impartial eye, I wonder about the wisdom of having female ministers of state. A woman won’t shine in politics if she has to pussyfoot around with parliaments and cabinets, explaining her actions to men who treat her like a walking petticoat. She really needs to be a queen, preferably with life-and-death powers over her subjects. The good thing about female tyrants is that they are relatively moderate and won’t initiate gruesome purges just to remind everyone who the daddy is. The only exception I can think of is Mary Tudor, who burned a lot of people for no good reason after taking a Spaniard into her bed. Some experiences will bring out the pyromaniac in any woman. But by and large, you’ve got to do something pretty horrendous for a queen to cook your goose. The Queen of Hearts was funny only because she was so atypical.

Opinions differ on what the best sort of queen is. The neo-classicists favour a scheming temptress like Cleopatra, who bends powerful men to her will by wantonly feeding their bedroom fetishes. The neo-barbarians prefer the fearless virago, who rides into battle in an armour-plated brassiere and can throttle a man between her muscular thighs. As a dutiful son of the Mother Continent, I endorse the semi-mythical African queens so vividly described by Ms Kola Boof. These Nubian sovereigns were bisexual necromancers who wore no clothes and could summon forest demigods for Earthly congress. It is said that they brought their female votaries to ecstasy by licking the tips of their noses. It is a salutary lesson for modern humans that naked women were once revered for the majesty of their souls.

Politics, nevertheless, is not the ideal career for well-bred women. Dr Whipsnade’s friend, Lady Chuffington, is fretting about the prospects of her eldest daughter, currently enrolled in a Cultural Studies programme at the University of East London. The girl apparently dresses in the “Gothic” style and intends to spend the next summer vacation making a film about “Inkubus Sukkubus”, a musical ensemble venerated by her cult. In her desperation, Her Ladyship has asked me to counsel the wayward chit.

“Perhaps you might speak to her, Mr Bananas,” she said on the phone last week. “Tell her that there is nothing clever (or “cool” as they say) about dressing like a drag performer’s widow on the day of his funeral.”

“Lady Chuffington,” I replied, “rather than criticising her current fashion sense, I would prefer to induce a change in her behaviour by citing positive alternatives.”

“Well do as you wish!” she replied rather testily. “I am concerned with the outcome rather than the stratagem used to bring it about.”

I have since studied some pictures of these Gothic women and frankly I’ve seen a lot worse. Their “Brides of Dracula” look gives them the appearance of devilishly sensual creatures who might even tempt a hard-bitten male gorilla to become a little harder and more bitten. Yet I’ve made a promise to Lady Chuffington and I’m not the sort to ape to go back on his word. I shall talk to her daughter – but I’m damned if I know what I’ll say to her.

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Octopussy

A marine biologist asks me whether gorillas indulge in cross-dressing. I eye him warily. A lot of these underwater boffins are kinky devils, gliding beneath the waves in their rubber suits so they can touch up unsuspecting turtles.

“We gorillas only wear clothes on special occasions,” I reply. “In a few days time we shall celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in Royal Navy uniforms. The females will technically be in drag, but don’t even think about getting into that scene. They’d dress you up as a French cabin boy and subject your bottom to the grossest indecencies.”

“Erm…that’s very interesting,” he mumbles. “The reason I ask is because male octopi sometimes disguise themselves as females as a mating strategy.”

“Why would that be of any help?” I ask. “Even if the female octopi were sapphists they’d soon smell a rat. You can only fool all of the females with some of your parts.”

“Well that’s not really the point,” he explains. “The weaker males pretend to be females so they can approach the real females without being attacked by the dominant males.”

“Now I get you! They use camouflage to sneak past the escorting vessels so they can fire their torpedoes at close range! An ingenious tactical manoeuvre, but not feasible in primate society. Female apes don’t mate with transvestites. If Danny La Rue had been a gorilla he would never have got laid.”

The deep-sea detective scratches his chin and nods, referring me to a newspaper article before retiring for the night.

It seems that octopi are much cleverer than I thought, but I still don’t like them: they are mean, sulky creatures, who hide in crevices and squirt you with ink if you accidentally tread on their toes. The villainous Ernst Blofeld should have been stroking a pet octopus rather than a white cat. How odd that the only woman over 40 that James Bond ever bedded called herself ‘Octopussy’ and made the critter the symbol of her all-girl kick-boxing club. If memory serves, one of the bad guys got a face full of sucking octopus when he shattered the indoor aquarium. Sex maniacs, the lot of them.

Yet no amount of enmity would ever persuade me to eat an octopus. Along with serpent and swine, its flesh is forbidden to gorillas. The practice of devouring one’s foes is a nauseating habit invented by chimpanzees and copied by primitive humans. There is a pit somewhere in New Mexico containing the bones of butchered humans. When it was discovered, fossilised human turds were found on top of the remains. “Kill your enemies, eat their flesh and shit on their bones” was apparently the motto of those prehistoric savages. It took many millennia before humans learned to give their fallen foes a decent burial, as we gorillas have always done.

Of course, the use of deadly force is very rare in gorilla society, partly because it conflicts with our pacifist beliefs, but also because of the extensive range of non-lethal techniques we’ve developed. Nothing will ever beat climbing a tree and dropping a coconut on an intruder’s bonce – it’s the most insouciant method of incapacitation ever devised. Humans, meanwhile, are still experimenting with dubious innovations involving sausages-coshes and spice-rubs. It’s the mark of a species driven by malice rather than economy of effort.

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Art lesson

Miss Scarlet-Blue, the pouting sex-kitten of South London, has sent me some pictures to look at. Not indecent photographs of herself, I should hasten to add. She knows better than to distract a gorilla with fatuous images of that kind. No, the pictures she has forwarded are works of art – created, she assures me, by the great masters of history. It’s part of her high-minded mission to share the finer aspects of human culture with her hairy cousins. I shall reciprocate, in due course, by showing her a few things we gorillas are good at.

Apes are no strangers to the creative use of textures and dyes. Gibbons were doing remarkable things with elephant dung long before your ancestors were daubing the walls of their caves. Had I been a prehistoric cave-dweller, I would have left the walls alone and painted a picture of a hideous monster above the entrance to scare off predators. Art must have a practical side when survival hangs in the balance. Only a species obsessed with impressing visitors would spend so much time on interior decoration. If I want to dazzle my dinner companions, I scratch my face with my toes. Try it yourself before jeering.

I‘m not sure what to think about Miss Scarlet’s exhibits. We gorillas appreciate art in a holistic way, where the personality of the creator is as important as the work. It seems to me that a lot of human maestros had major character flaws: Da Vinci was a know-it-all; Michelangelo was a drama queen; Picasso was a devious weirdo. The ones we esteem most highly are painters like Titian and Reubens – honorary gorillas who preferred their females to have a bit of meat on them.

Strangest of all, to be sure, are the contemporary practitioners who imagine that pickling a dead creature in formaldehyde is a form of artistic expression. Damien Hirst is a name Miss Scarlet has mentioned on a number of occasions, although not necessarily with approval. This piqued my curiosity and inspired me to do a little research. What caught my eye was not the artefacts he has created but a photograph of the man himself. I immediately recognised him as an apprentice clown who had spent a summer with the circus I was in. He went by the name of ‘Daffy Sucks’ and obviously wasn’t cut out for clowning; but he did paint landscapes which he showed to anyone who was interested. I commented on his collection once:

“Master Sucks,” I said, “the market for pretty pictures is saturated. The kind of work you are doing is found on greeting cards which sell for the price of a condom. Consider your fellow humans who pay thousands to go on safari. Do you suppose they part with their cash to see beautiful sunsets and flowers blooming after the first rains? Not on your nelly! What they crave is the sight of lions gorging on dismembered carcasses, their faces reddened with blood, and entrails scattered across the savanna. Treat art collectors like the crowd in a Roman amphitheatre – the more you shock them with offal and gore, the more they will pay for your creations.”

My well-intentioned advice prompted him to walk off in a sulk, and I didn’t expect another viewing. How surprised I was when a few days later he asked me to inspect a new painting. This one depicted a hedgehog. Two halves of a hedgehog, to be precise, for the animal had been bisected with a machete, leaving its internal organs clearly visible. Inside its stomach were the partly-digested head of a mouse, an earthworm and a pickled onion (or something resembling it). Having just eaten breakfast, I felt the bile rising in my throat.

“A overpowering piece of work!” I spluttered. “If you’ll excuse me I have some business to attend to in my trailer.”

He left the circus a short while later and has never looked back. How I wish I’d made an offer for that painting! I believe he called it The Physical Impossibility of Appreciating the True Value of a Hedgehog Autopsy in the Mind of Someone Living.

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South Sea Hustler

An insurance broker tells me that a prostitute has applied for a job with his firm.

“How do you know she was on the game?” I ask.

“She told me to my face as bold as brass!” he exclaims. “She said it was how she paid her way through college!”

I advise him to proceed with caution. Prostitutes are well-qualified to be financial advisers, but you have to check their references very carefully. Did she always explain the contract to her clients in layman’s language? Did she give refunds to men who lost their bottle at the last minute? Did she sell many products that went bust (and nowhere else)? Being an unsentimental cash accumulator is all very well, but without professional ethics things go tits-up pretty quickly.

Let no one forget that a pair of upper-class courtesans were behind the most infamous financial scandal in history. The Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendall lured men of means into buying shares of the ethereal South Sea Company, cleverly selling their own holdings shortly before the bubble burst in 1720. Bewigged squires rendered shirtless by their imprudence railed in fury at their predicament:

“We have been undone by whores!” thundered one outraged victim. “And vexatious whores!”

They were undone, of course, by their own folly and greed. The first rule of investment is that crowds are inherently stupid. The second is that whores always sell at the top of the market.

Someone once asked me whether a gentleman should ever pay for sex. I replied that a gentleman should always pay for sex, if only to reassure the lady that she is worth it. If a cash gift is too crude, he should buy her flowers or a meal. It is psychologically helpful for the male to feel he is lucky to have got into the female’s pants, as he will then make the most of an opportunity that may not recur. The minute it becomes obvious that she wants it more than him, he begins to lose interest and his balls start to ache. I always give my females a treat of nuts or berries before mounting them, even if they’re in oestrus and gagging for it. They usually hurl them contemptuously into the air, but it’s the thought that counts.

Of course, a woman can make a fortune in the sex industry without selling her body to any slobbering oaf with a fat wallet. A 49-year-old divorcee did so by inventing the ultimate female sex aid. After years of frustration, she converted her vacuum cleaner into an instrument for pleasuring herself with pulses of vibrating air. It is claimed that the device can make a woman climax in a mere ten seconds, a feat which not even the Lone Ranger or Zorro could have accomplished.

Some people belittle sex toys as cheap substitutes for the emotional and physical fulfilment of a loving relationship. This may be true, but isn’t a cheap substitute better than an expensive one? And what devoted lover could make a woman come in ten seconds? As we say in the jungle: orgasm first, relationship later.

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Five fat men and a pole

A correspondent cheekily suggests that I audition for a new show in London. It features five pot-bellied men who cavort on stage while embracing a vertical pole. Rather than shaving and oiling their skin, they proudly display their body hair, a gimmick which inspired them to name their act “Bearlesque”. It has attracted a large following of middle-aged women, thrilled at the spectacle of these human potatoes pawing the pole like bears searching for honey. The performers never remove their underpants – there are some sights which even the raunchiest matrons would prefer to forgo.

As one who has flexed his own limbs expansively in the circus, I am not without empathy for these podgy pole-dancers and wish them every success. I need hardly point out, however, that they are a long way from being bears, let alone gorillas. As any wild creature knows, all the hair in the world is useless if you lack mobility. These fellows would clearly be out of breath if you even mentioned the idea of climbing a tree or chasing marauding baboons. Not that they’d be capable of doing much if they actually caught up with the baboons. In all probability, the baboons would make mincemeat of them.

It’s a far cry from the feats I performed in the circus. I don’t deny that my most enthusiastic fans were women, but I earned their adulation in a manner worthy of a jungle ape. After years in the ring, I found that what the human female admires most about gorillas is our long, strong, hairy arms. All I had to do to induce excited gasps from heaving bosoms was grasp a fleeing dwarf by his ankle and swing him around my head like a shepherd’s sling. It was stunts like this that motivated the ladies to queue for my autograph and other mementoes. There was no need for me to straddle a shiny pole or mince about in a sexually ambiguous fashion.

Yet I’m not the sort of ape who fails to give credit where it is due. Let no one belittle the fact that Bearlesque has put bums on seats, albeit rather large ones. The reason for the show’s success seems to be that its female fans enjoy ogling men who look like their husbands. It’s really a very clever piece of psychology on their part. Men who see their wives hooting at fellows no better than them will naturally feel more confident about their own sexual allure. And this restored confidence will lead to a general rising of the sap, prompting them to give the missus a thorough seeing to when she gets back home. Anything an honest wife can do to enhance her husband’s self-esteem will be re-paid with interest when her furrow needs ploughing.

The importance of flattery in human fornication reminds me of the finale of a film called Carnal Knowledge, which starred the redoubtable Jack Nicholson. By the end of the movie, Jack is a middle-aged man with a string of failed relationships behind him. He is contemptuous of women and utterly cynical of the idea that male and female can co-exist in healthy symbiosis. Yet he is not celibate. In the final scene of the movie, he enters the abode of an attractive lady who stimulates his waning sexual appetite by sweet-talking him in the most exaggerated manner. But then she fluffs a line, and we discover that she is actually a prostitute speaking from a script that Jack had written for her! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I leave you to draw your own conclusions from that sorry denouement – there are surely profound lessons there for humans of all classes, genders and persuasions.

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The German question

An overweight English tourist recently claimed that Boris Becker and Steffi Graf were once an item. Can you remember that? I have no recollection of any such liaison. I suspect the man imagined they must have got it on because they were both German. It reminds me of that episode of Star Trek where a Vulcan chick boards the Enterprise and everyone assumes that Spock’s ears will start quivering with lust. They never did, of course, and those who reason in this fashion are guilty of an exceedingly crass type of generalisation.

I’ve actually got a lot of respect for Becker. As well as being a great Wimbledon champion, he had the most pickable nose of any player who graced the centre court. I reckon he could have scooped it out with a teaspoon rather than soiling his fingers. A lot of people can’t get past the fact that he impregnated a woman in a restaurant. The important thing, surely, is that he acknowledged the child as his own rather than denying everything and hiding in New Zealand. By all accounts, he has participated in the girl’s upbringing as well as coughing up the required cash. You have to respect a fellow who manfully accepts the consequences of giving a woman the most thrilling two minutes of her life.

I should mention here that human babies have been conceived in far stranger circumstances. In the circus I worked for there was a husband-and-wife team who performed on the trampoline. In their last season together, they resolved to make a baby while bouncing up and down together on the apparatus of their trade. Obviously not during a show – we gave them an hour alone inside the big tent before it was dismantled for the next venue. I agreed to stand at the entrance to discourage peeping toms. Although it took them a while to get into position, the deed was somehow done, and the pregnancy was confirmed a few weeks later. I believe they named their son Zebedee.

The other interesting thing about Becker’s reproductive activities is his preference for sultry mulatto women. For a ginger-haired Teuton, this shows excellent judgement. The last thing any child needs is a double-helping of the albino gene, resulting in skin that would melt in the sunlight. It also proves that Boris has no sympathy whatever for the abominable racial theories of his grandparents’ generation, in which we apes were offensively dragged into the argument. Speaking against evil is good, but showing you are against it in the way you live your life is even better.

The Germans have come a long way since the dark days of World War Two. They no longer hero-worship madmen and are much less boastful about their sausages. They do still retain the twin obsessions of outdoor exercise and nudity (a legacy of their resistance to the Roman Empire) but are now seeking to subject these pastimes to proper oversight. One who has fallen foul of the new regulations is a naked hiker who went to prison rather than pay a fine for indecent exposure. Although the man is clearly bonkers, I applaud his defiant stand against authority. If more Germans had done that in 1933, Herr Hitler might have had egg on his face a good deal sooner than he did.

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When humans cry

My friend Smacker Ramrod, the circus vet, once walked into my trailer with a sheepish look on his face.

“What would you say if I told you I’ve just seen a movie that made me cry?” he asked.

I would say that you were a snivelling ass,” I replied, “unless, perchance, the title of the movie was Lassie Come Home.”

It wasn’t. The film that had moved him to tears was called Ghost. I expect most of you have seen it. Patrick Swayze plays a dead man who tries to warn his widow that she is about to be seduced and swindled by his murderer. The evil one is thwarted, with the help of Whoopi Golderg, and carted off to the underworld by demons. The film ends with Mr Swayze bidding an emotional farewell to his wife before going to a better place. I freely admit it’s the sort of experience that would make a gorilla cry like a baby if it ever happened to him – or possibly even to his best friend. But watching actors simulate the whole thing produced no more than a rueful sigh in my own hairy bosom. I suspect that what prompted so many humans to weep was a “happy ending” in which a young widow remains well and truly widowed. Such is life.

I do of course sympathise with people crying to unburden their aching hearts. I must have seen at least a dozen adult humans weep in my circus days – on nearly every occasion it was a woman. I was quite happy to comfort these ladies with a hairy embrace if they stumbled in my direction, but in doing so I always observed the following rules:

(a) never ask the woman why she is crying;

(b) if she volunteers the information, reply only with monosyllabic murmurs of sympathy;

(c) never refer to the incident if you later cross the woman’s path.

I remember one young lady who after blubbering into my chest for five minutes looked up at me in apparent curiosity.

“Don’t you want to know why I’m crying?” she sniffed.

“I already know why,” I replied. “You are crying because you are overcome with emotion at a misfortune you have suffered. It happens to the best of us.”

For some reason she found this amusing, which encouraged me to send her on her way with a gentle pat, delivered a good four inches above her bottom.

Yet I must admit to confused feelings when movie stars cry in public. As they are said to express their emotions on film by reliving events in their lives, it makes me wonder whether they’re recalling past movie roles when they do it for real. Do you remember how Gwyneth Paltrow wept uncontrollably on accepting her Oscar? Rather than feeling any sympathy, I found myself judging her performance – almost good enough for a second gold statuette, I thought. I should add that I have nothing against Gwynnie as an actress or a woman. In naming her daughter “Apple”, she showed remarkably good taste for a human. Had she chosen the name “Apollonia”, I would have lampooned her as a pretentious bimbo.

I expect you want to know when I last cried. It happened quite recently, as a matter of fact, when my females jumped on me without warning and pinned me against a prickly bush. I’m not certain I was technically crying, come to think of it – but my eyes certainly watered a fair bit.

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Fossey reborn?

My females are oddly fascinated by the Republican Party’s candidate for vice-president. Not out of feminist solidarity, which is of no concern to lady gorillas. No, the reason is much stranger. They seem to think that Sarah Palin is the spitting image of the late Dian Fossey, a woman revered by gorillas throughout Africa. I’ve put up their pictures so you can judge for yourselves. If their features are even in the same game reserve I’ll chew my toes off.

Between you and me, gorillas aren’t very good at telling human faces apart – I only got the hang of it after years spent in the circus. I recently brought a copy of Hello! magazine to the jungle. One of my females snatched it from me and studied a picture of Sienna Miller intently.

“I’m so glad she’s back in the limelight!” she hooted. “I’ve always had a soft spot for Dolly Parton.”

Heh! I didn’t have the heart to tell the poor deluded apette that Miss Parton was then having her boobs deflated at the Betty Hoover Clinic.

With the election approaching, I am already getting irritating e-mails asking me who I’m endorsing and similar such nonsense. This is when I have to thump my chest and remind people that I’m a gorilla. Your problems are not our problems, and the only American dream in these parts is the one the manager of the safari camp had after watching a movie called Forrest Hump (available on DVD). Until the candidates announce their policies for ridding the jungle of snakes and crocodiles, who gets into the White House is none of our business.

I suppose if I were forced to choose I’d back the ticket with the most body hair. Unfortunately this is pure guesswork when one of the candidates is a woman. Senator McCain is probably a hairy old dog when he takes off his vest, but who knows what Mrs Palin does to her feminine tufts? As a mother of five, one would hope that she doesn’t over-prune, but you never know the state of a woman’s foliage until you’ve seen her in the sauna. That is not a favour I’d care to ask of her, given that her husband looks like the Neanderthal type who might make a fuss. He has nothing to scare me, of course, but one doesn’t want to come between a man and his wife merely to further one’s reputation as a political pundit.

The wildcard in this election is supposedly the “Hilldog factor”. Will supporters of Mrs Clinton be so bitter that that they’ll vote Republican in the hope that Old Pop McCain quickly pops it and they’ll get their madam president after all. Well I’ve got news for them. I know for a fact that Hillary could never have won if she’d been the Democratic nominee. The Republicans, you see, had infiltrated a super-hot velcro-vixen into her campaign team, with the sole mission of seducing the former first lady and telling the world’s press what her cha-cha tastes of. And you can bet the lying hussy would have claimed it had some horrible flavour like "pickled herring" or "essence of hermit crab". No presidential bid could have survived a political bombshell of that magnitude – the merest glimpse of Hillary’s jodhpurs would have made voters cry “Euw!” and pop a mint inside their mouths.

How do I know all this, I hear you ask? Because a fat American bloke in a baseball cap told me so while guzzling Budweisers at the safari guesthouse. Let no one say that Gorilla Bananas lacks credible sources for his scoops.

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Dame shortage Down Under

An Australian mayor has received a fierce tongue-lashing for inviting “ugly Sheilas” to settle in his town. The tactless oaf has only himself to blame. Yet it appears that he acted from the best motives, believing that homely spinsters would find it relatively easy to bag a husband in his isolated mining community. Furious female residents have nevertheless demanded his resignation, calling him “a pig”, “a ruffian” and “a shit-eating wombat”. They seem to think he was implying that they had the sex appeal of the duck-billed platypus. The point he was actually making was that the men of the town, who currently outnumber the women fivefold, are in no position to be choosy. The same mathematical logic would apply whether the existing female population were beauty queens or warty-nosed crones.

A more valid criticism of the mayor is that his invitation is likely to be ignored. Women have their pride, and I can’t see many of them migrating to a place acclaimed as the Hagsville of the Australian mining belt. The fellow obviously hasn’t a clue about the advertising game. If you’re desperate to buy a breeding mare, you don’t tell the world that any fat-arsed nag with four hooves will do. Instead, you place an advertisement in the leading horsey periodicals asking for top-class fillies to mate with the finest thoroughbred stallions. Everyone knows that people exaggerate in these notices, and you’ll get plenty of enquiries from the owners of mares about to end up as cat food. As we say in the jungle, “if it’s fertile, it’s fuckable”.

Now the root cause of all this hoo-hah is the human obsession with facial features. The funny thing is that my friend Smacker Ramrod, the circus vet, once told me that in his experience pretty women made disappointing girlfriends. He found them demanding in everyday life, passive in bed and not nearly as gorgeous as they had appeared from a distance of twenty-five feet. The women he had the fondest memories of were the ones he wasn’t initially sure that he fancied. They were the girls who worked hard on their all-round game – many were brilliant conversationalists; others were gymnastic in the sack; a few could play the ukulele. This led me to surmise that you can’t really separate personality from appearance in the human mating game. A women who is beautiful and shrewish will eventually be seen as unattractive by her lovers, just as a woman who is plain and sweet will find men warming to her appearance as well.

All this human angst about physical appearance makes me glad to belong to a species where looks don’t matter. Not the look of your face, at any rate. A firm rump with a generous covering of hair is a pre-requisite for most of the good things of gorilla life, including sex with mates of your choice, status in the higher echelons of society and ringside seats at the python-wrestling tournaments. Gorillas don’t fall in love at first sight, but if we did it would be a glimpse of a furry rump that triggered the emotion. A gorilla version of Mickey Dolenz (himself an honorary ape in many respects) would have sung:

Then I saw her tush, now I’m a believer

I don’t suppose many men will fall in love with a woman’s arse, but if Jennifer Lopez’s doesn’t do it for them I doubt anyone’s will.

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