Torpedoes armed and ready

An Australian submarine commander has been reprimanded for suggesting that female sailors wear bikinis to attract male recruits. Quite right too. I’m sure the young men of his nation were deeply offended by the notion that they’d spend weeks inside a giant sardine tin merely to ogle a few dolly birds. They could do that at Bondi Beach without the inconvenience of having to inhale each other’s farts. In any case, it is a noble tradition that the crew of a warship should bottle their libido while at sea. The economy of many port cities depends on hordes of sexually frustrated sailors painting the town red during their shore leave, lured to excess by the tarts and nymphomaniacs who congregate for their arrival.

If the Australian navy is short of manpower, the prospect of combat at sea might attract a few red-blooded volunteers. Australia’s natural enemy is New Zealand, whose sportsmen have been getting away with murder for far too long, taunting their antipodean rivals with obscene chants and gestures. I’m not sure whether New Zealand has a navy, but the Aussies could easily ram a few of their merchant ships while jeering in larrikin style. The coup de grâce would be a daring amphibious raid on enemy territory, taking a large number of sheep captive. The Kiwis would surely raise the white flag after such a bitter humiliation.

After subjugating New Zealand they should turn their attention to Malaysia. The former prime minister of that country is continually insulting Australians, calling them “roughnecks”, “white men” and other derogatory terms. He is clearly a madman in need of a strong dose of gunboat diplomacy. I would advise them to send a couple of destroyers to bombard his mansion with cans of Australian beer, a greatly feared beverage in that part of Asia. He’ll think twice before shooting off his mouth after his hair has been shampooed with a gallon of tepid Castlemaine XXXX. Sadly, the current administration in Canberra probably lacks the nerve to order such an expedition. The stomach for a fight seems to have withered since John “The Sheriff” Howard was deposed from high office.

One nation Australia should never go to war with is the old colonial master – the conflict would be far too one-sided. The gutless spirit of today’s Royal Navy was seen in the capture of its sailors by the wild-eyed crazies of the Iranian speedboat flotilla. The hostages sung like canaries during their interrogation, and even attended a farewell burka-and-turban party before their release. Lord Nelson would have bitten the fingers of his remaining hand to witness those craven youths pay homage to the hairiest beards of the Islamic Republic.

The only British mariner captured during the Battle of Trafalgar was Able Seaman Noah Dogsworth, unluckily knocked cold by an enemy marine. When a French officer tried to kiss his cheeks before his repatriation, Dogsworth rebuffed the Gallic upstart with a bite to the nose.

“Blast yer arse from a cannon!” he shouted. “Give me biscuit weevils and stale piss for supper afore corrupting me with yer Frenchy ways!”

The spirit of Dogsworth surely lives on in the proud island race from which he sprung – but not alas in the Queen’s Navy.

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MacBecks

A couple of Irishmen are trying to popularise Shakespeare by staging a modern version of the Scottish play. MacBecks is the story of a young lad in Elizabethan England who dreams of becoming the first pretty-boy footballer in a sport dominated by snaggletooths and wobblebottoms. Three scheming spice-witches rustle up a cauldron of perfumes and aphrodisiacs to cast a spell on the boy, enabling him to dance around his opponents like a twinkle-toed fairy. The spice-witch Poshoria then seduces MacBecks and presents him with a squirming litter of Becklings. The family migrate to the undiscovered continent of America, where they acquire fabulous riches by selling soccer-beads to the gullible natives.

It’s nice to see a Shakespearian tragedy rewritten with a happy ending, but I doubt it will be a hit. The common trait of all the Bard’s characters was their incontinent verbosity – even the stupid ones prattled on at great length about the most minor issues. The contrast with the Spice-Becks interaction could scarcely be greater. They are probably the first celebrity couple to have tied the knot without exchanging more than half-a-dozen coherent sentences. This isn’t meant to be a criticism, mind you. We of the jungle know what can be achieved with facial expressions and scent markings. I should imagine Victoria’s sultry pout told Becks everything he needed to know as he trotted off the football pitch, exuding his manly odours.

A better vehicle for the Becks story would have been a new version of Pygmalion called My Fair Laddie. The plot might go something like this:

Victoria Spice, professor of celebritology, has the world at her feet: crowds of photographers flock to take her picture when she poses in expensive yet gaudy evening gowns. Then she has a chance meeting with Becks, a ball-kicking yobbo whose dress sense is limited to tracksuits, trainers and hooded jackets. “I bet you I can turn this ragamuffin into a fashion icon that will fool the world,” she boasts to her Spice sisters. She takes Becks under her wing and dresses him in fancy clothes, teaching him to smile like a ninny for the cameras. Sure enough, his picture appears in all the glossiest celebrity magazines. But Becks was much happier kicking balls and gives the posh professor an ultimatum: “If you want me to keep doing this you better let me shag you cos it’s the only reason I let you dress me up like a poofter.” So they marry, have kids and con gullible Americans into giving them sackfuls of cash. The End.

It must be said that Shakespeare has never been popular in the Mother Continent. Most of his characters are simply too camp for a land where Nature, red in tooth and claw, is prowling about in your back garden. The only one of his plays that has wide appeal among the hairy fraternity is The Taming of the Shrew, purely because it’s about a hot-headed minx who gives people a good wallop when provoked. Fiery little women are a great simian favourite – most gorillas would love to keep one as a pet if they could afford the cosmetics and toiletries. Who would be the shrew in a modern version of the play? The Icelandic pixie Bjork obviously has the right personality, but did anyone ever manage to tame her? And Liz Hurley has certainly been tamed, but was she ever really a shrew? Artistic endeavour is full of such dilemmas.

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Barking up the wrong tree

How disappointing to hear that an American Mom got sent to the loony bin for impersonating her 15-year-old daughter. This continual blurring of the line between madness and eccentricity will cast a blight over human society. All the 34-year-old woman did was go back to school so she could become a cheerleader. There’s nothing remotely potty about that and I can’t see how she was inconveniencing anyone. On the contrary, I bet her bodily gyrations inspired the beefy footballers far more than the usual girlie whirling. In a heavy contact sport you need the curvy flesh of a mature woman to encourage the home team to get stuck in.

I never call anyone mad unless their urges have a self-destructive edge. A good example of a real nutter was that German fellow who agreed to let a cannibal eat him. After dining together on his severed penis (no more than an appetiser, one would assume), the cannibal killed him and feasted on his body. So apart from the penis hors d’oeuvre, the victim was plainly unable to enjoy whatever pleasure there was in the act. That put the seal on his condition as far as I was concerned. A lunatic in his right mind would have demanded that the cannibal eat him alive.

People often assume that the tyrants of human history were mad, but I reckon this was rarely the case. A lot of them, like Caligula, were just plain bad, and a few others had some physical illness that made them act strangely. Take King George III of England for example. He’s known as the mad king, but he actually had a rare disease that turned his urine blue. I know for a fact that passing blue water makes humans cantankerous, because I once had dealings with an old gypsy woman who briefly suffered from this condition. She was a prickly character from the start to be honest, but once her piss turned blue she started cackling like a demented witch. Fortunately I managed to resolve my differences with her peacefully.

If you enjoy listening to poppycock, the most entertaining mental disorder is paranoia. I remember sitting alone in Dr Whipsnade’s lounge when I was joined by his houseguest, an antique dealer by trade.

“Rainy weather,” I said, making polite conversation.

“I like the rain,” he replied, “it gives me the chance to stock up on fresh water.”

“Isn’t your house connected to the mains supply?” I asked.

He then gave me a vehement sermon on the dangers of drinking tap water. He said that it was doped with chemicals to make men infertile and women insatiable. This allowed select breeding males, most of them freemasons, to impregnate women at their leisure and populate the next generation with their offspring. “Have you ever seen a freemason drink tap water?” he asked rhetorically. “They all buy the bottled stuff from Tesco.”

I thought it best not to argue with him. These delusional types have a rebuttal for every critique and I didn’t want him to accuse me of being a freemason.

“I am both fascinated and disturbed by your discourse,” I said truthfully. “If you don’t mind, I would now like to watch a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon on TV.”

“If you’re turning on that contraption I’m off to the conservatory,” he said. “People who watch television don’t realise that the television is also watching them.”

This assertion made me feel like Foghorn Leghorn – that rooster was always dealing with creatures crazier than himself.

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Family unlikeness

There was an open-air screening of the Star Wars trilogy at this year’s simian convention. After watching The Empire Strikes Back a chimpanzee approached me with a puzzled look on his face.

“If Luke Skywalker was really Darth Vader’s son, why wasn’t he called Luke Vader?” he asked.

“You silly nitwit!” I exclaimed. “Lord Vader obviously wasn’t the type to marry a woman and play happy families. He must have had a brief but torrid affair with Luke’s mother in some remote outpost lacking a drug store.”

“I still don’t buy it,” replied the chimp. “How come they looked so different if they were father and son?”

He had a point. The family resemblance was zero – indeed they hardly seemed to belong to the same species. Mr Vader’s peculiar costume did admittedly obscure his features, but what about his deep throaty voice? A man who spoke like that shouldn’t have sired a squeaky little whelp like Skywalker.

“You have to allow some creative licence in these movies,” I said to the chimp. “In any case, we don’t really know what Darth Vader looked like as a young man. Humans change a lot in appearance as they age.”

The chimpanzee pursed his lips and trotted off while I pondered the problem of detecting a family likeness in humans.

Back in my circus days, a theatre producer told me about a stage version of Star Wars he was planning.

“I’m so thrilled about it!” he enthused. “I’ve hired Bill Solly, who wrote the songs for Boy Meets Boy. He’s already composed a fabulous duet for Han Solo and Luke Skywalker that brought a tear to my eye! It’s called The Space Between Us.”

“I don’t see how you’ll manage the special effects,” I said. “What about the sword fights with those luminous blades that suddenly poke out of the hilt?”

“I’ve thought of an ingenious substitute!” he declared. “The actors in those scenes will have a florescent cucumber hidden up their sleeve. A jerk of the wrist and hey presto, it will pop out into their hand!”

“You’d better remind the cast that biting an opponent’s cucumber is not a legitimate form of self defence,” I remarked.

He shrieked and clapped his hands before flouncing off. When he later offered me the part of Chewbacca (the braying overgrown Teddy Bear) I told him where he could stick his cucumber. The show never got off the ground, which was just as well because Star Wars wouldn’t have worked as a gay pantomime – Princess Leia’s sexual chemistry with Han Solo is too important to the story.

Speaking of which, Carrie Fisher has revealed that her movie flirtation with Harrison Ford was accompanied by all sorts of hanky-panky off-screen. On one occasion she found her rugged co-star naked in her closet. It didn’t seem to bother her, probably because she admitted to having a huge crush on him. It makes me wonder if a man can ever go wrong by appearing unclothed before a woman who fancies him.

Of course, a naked man who infiltrates a woman’s private space is generally up to no good. I was shocked to hear of a pervert who broke into the home of an 88-year-old woman in Portland and confronted the old lady in the nude. She immediately grabbed hold of his genitals and squeezed them with a force that was far too great to bring him any pleasure. He ran away yelping, but was later apprehended by the police.

The woman’s behaviour reminds me of Sassy Miss Kara, a fierce little minx who also lives in Portland. I recall her once boasting of the manoeuvres she had learned to maim any man who dared to molest her. Such skills are often passed down the maternal line, which brings us once again to the question of family resemblance. Is the dick-crushing dowager Miss Kara’s grandmother? I await her answer with dignified patience.

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The boob tube

A corporate lawyer and his daughter arrive at the safari guesthouse. The girl is an aspiring actress who has landed a supporting role in a BBC costume drama. I am tending bar when she approaches me for a refill.

“I’m soooo worried about being typecast, GB,” she says. “If people get used to me being a virgin in a petticoat I’ll never get a part where I show off my tits.”

I know better than to suggest that she work in a strip club in her spare time. A serious actress wants to flash her tits in an artistically appropriate context, where the emotional nuances of her character complement the perkiness of her boobies.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I reply. “Do you remember Lisa Bonet who played Old Pop Cosby’s daughter? She got a part in a film called Angel Heart where her nipples were memorably erect. I’m sure you’ll get similar opportunities in due course. In the meantime, there’s no need to show your tits to anyone but the producer. And then only if he asks.”

“What about the leading man?” she inquires.

“He can show his tits to whomever he wants,” I reply.

“You big hairy fool!” she says chuckling, twisting her finger into my torso before sauntering off with drink in hand.

Thespians can be pretty forward, but beneath the bravado they are riddled with anxieties. I hope I succeeded in soothing this particular young lady, who is an exciting prospect in many respects. Of course there is nothing wrong with an actress showing off her titties provided it’s done in the right way. They must always be a side-order to the main dish, which is the acting and the story, and never be cast in a starring role. If possible, their exposure should take the viewer by surprise.

Here’s an example of that I mean. Imagine a tense psychological thriller in which Jamie Lee Curtis witnesses a murder. She enters her flat in a state of disquiet and runs a bath before returning to her bedroom. She looks at herself in the mirror before pulling off her sweater to reveal a phenomenal pair of puppies. Who needs a bra with breasts that pliant? She walks around the room so you can appreciate their buoyancy before the scene changes abruptly to James Woods in a police station. You leave the cinema having watched a gripping drama with fine acting and an intelligent plot. The display of Jamie Lee’s tatas were merely an extra squirt of cream in the chocolate éclair.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have Mr Ali G at the Cannes film festival, asking a budding porn star to show him her breasts. Without hesitation, she unfastens the straps of her frock and gaily flourishes her hooters at the camera. Mr G says that girls in Staines make you buy them dinner before doing that, and comments un-profoundly on diverse cultural practices across the globe. All in all, an unedifying spectacle which cheapens and sullies the female bosom.

A vacuous person once said “It’s not what you do but the way that you do it”. Even vacuous people occasionally stumble upon the truth. I worry about talented young actresses being in such a hurry to give audiences a sight of their boobs. The wrong sort of exposure could ruin a promising career and force them into coarser genres of screen entertainment. It’s at times like this that we miss the wise counsel of the late Oliver Reed. I bet he would have had something insightful to say about it.

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Intimate souvenirs

Are you fond of a mystery? I’m puzzling over the identity of the pervert who paid $5,300 for Scarlett Johannson’s used tissue. After blowing her nose on the Jay Leno show, she put the item in a sealed bag which was auctioned on e-Bay. In this commercial age, the snot of a beautiful actress is a highly marketable commodity in the deviant ghoul community. My prime suspect is that filthy devil El Barbudo, who once confessed to having erotic fantasies about women with runny noses. I should imagine the bearded degenerate would immerse the tissue in a slimy gel to create a poultice for his private parts. It might go some way to abating the savagery of his sexual urge.

Another possibility is that that a mad scientist has acquired the tissue to extract Miss Johannson’s DNA and create an unspecified number of Scarlett clones. He would indoctrinate them from birth to conform to his evil plans, no doubt involving wanton promiscuity and the exposure of copious milky-white flesh (unlike the real Miss Johannson). Horse-whipping is too good for these modern-day Frankensteins.

Not everyone is obsessed with mucus, of course. I know from experience that the intimate possessions of a performing artist are like gold dust to his (or her) fans. In my circus days, a young woman once offered me a tidy sum for the pantaloons I wore during my act. As I had several spares, I could have borne the loss with equanimity. However my suspicions were aroused by her large breasts, which she seemed to be flaunting at me.

“What do you want them for?” I asked, referring to the pantaloons.

“They’re for my boyfriend,” she answered.

“Are you sure his bottom is big enough?”

“Oh yes, he’s got a huge arse. And he’s really big and hairy, like a…um…bear.”

“Won’t he be worried that people will laugh at him? They’re not really the latest thing in men’s fashion.”

“He’ll only put them on when we’re alone. I’ll cut a slit in the crotch so he can shag me while he’s wearing them.”

As you can imagine, I wasn’t too impressed by her readiness to rip apart the groin of one of my nattiest garments.

“Is that so?” I said sternly. “And what will you be thinking of when he ravishes you in the trouser-wear you have so casually desecrated?”

Her only response to this question was to giggle hysterically and punch me repeatedly in the arm. This caused me little pain, but I felt it lacked the reverence due from a true devotee. When she had calmed down, I asked an errand boy to fetch me a notebook and pencil.

“Here is the name of a theatrical supplier who sells the pantaloons,” I said, handing her a chit. “I trust this will be adequate for your purpose. I cannot involve myself in human mating practices, however indirectly.”

“But they won’t smell the same!” she protested.

“Smells are for flowers, baby!” I declared in the voice of a Harlem gangster, waving my hand to dismiss her from my presence.

Smells are very important, of course, but one shouldn’t hand them out to fans like autographs. It will be a cold day in the Congo before anyone bottles my essences.

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Disorderly conduct

I agree to tend bar at the safari guesthouse on New Year’s Eve, on condition that I leave before all the singing, smooching and tooting begins. In spite of this sensible precaution, the evening does not pass without incident. Towards the end of my shift, a big fat man with blond hair and a blond moustache staggers toward me while rolling up the sleeve of his right arm.

“Lez arm wrezzle!” he burps.

“Sir, you are drunk!” I exclaim. “Your barbarian ancestors were no doubt in a similar condition as they charged the Roman legions which were shortly to make mincemeat of them! Withdraw to a nearby table and sit down while I make you a cup of coffee!”

Rather than mollifying, my words seem to enrage him.

“You big hairy fugger!” he snarls, lunging at me with his fists.

I stick out a paw to prevent him getting within spitting range (gorillas have long arms, as you know) and wait for help to arrive while he flounders and flaps like a giant penguin. Presently, a posse of catering staff drag him off for a sedative and an early night. The other guests seem supportive of my stand, although some suggest I was too lenient.

“You should have taken him on and smashed his knuckles on the bar!” says one man.

“Had I been a chimpanzee, Sir, I surely would have done so,” I reply. “However we gorillas are pacifists. Furthermore, there are many women at this function who would have witnessed the spectacle, which might have led to unnatural emotions. The male gorilla who shows off in front of human females is like a rooster that lays eggs.”

I should mention here that we gorillas never drink alcohol to excess. The close proximity of hard liquor at the bar does not tempt me. In my circus days, I once met a Native American gentleman after a show we gave in New Mexico. His name was Chief Jimmy Big-Nose of the Navaho.

“Are you planning to be a circus ape all your life?” he asked.

“No, Chief, I shall one day return to the Congo and go back to jungle living.”

“That is good,” he said. “We Navaho used to be hunter gatherers until the white man came and made us foolish with his whisky. I hope you gorillas know better.”

“We shall surely learn from your example, Chief,” I replied. “Although in my experience humans of all colour are white men.”

“Yes,” agreed the chief pensively. “They are now.”

It is a great tragedy that Dr Timothy Leary failed in his quest to persuade people to renounce all narcotic substances other than LSD. In my experience, humans who take hallucinogenic drugs are generally well behaved. They will happily sit in a corner and babble away quietly with stupefied expressions on their faces. If they take it in groups they might be more noisy, laughing hysterically for no apparent reason. But such behaviour is of no concern in Africa, we’re used to it from the hyenas. If you’re going to get stoned, do it in a way that doesn’t involve accosting strangers or making offensive noises.

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