Me Cheeta

Cheeta

Fourth Estate, €13.99

Cheeta is the chimpanzee that starred with Johnny Weissmuller in the Tarzan films, and this book is his autobiography. Cheeta concedes he had some help but what a memoir it is! He is the last surviv­ing superstar from Hollywood's golden age and has plenty of juice to spill. He reveals Marlene Dietrich and Mercedes de Acosta weren't discreet in front of a supposedly dumb animal. He bonded with Bogart as they shared a cigarette and with Douglas Fairbanks after wrecking his Rolls.

A luvvie to the tips of his prehensile toes, Cheeta throws out encomiums like bananas. Weissmuller is top human, obviously. Cheeta didn't rate Maureen O'Sullivan, his co-star, but she was his rival for Weissmuller's affections, as well as being insipid. His last role was in Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison who hated animals, though Cheeta's verdict is the soul of simian magnanimity: "A good man and a very special human being."

Like many of his contemporaries, Cheeta became too fond of the bottle, yet is now, at 76, the oldest chimp alive. He is has reinvented himself as an abstract painter. Maybe we can look forward to another memoir, on another human zoo and cesspit of excess: the art world.