Animal of the Week January 16, 2006 -- Pete Burns' Monkey Coat

I never thought I would be scraping such depths... but the inspiration for this week's animal of the week comes from bloomin' Celebrity Big Brother.

Yes, another bunch of desperate freaks have entered the Hertfordshire hell pit in an attempt to resuscitate careers that most of us thought had been wiped off the mortuary slab as the smell of chlorine was being Gladed away from the adjacent morgue. Along with the psychotically fame-hungry role call, this year there are the surprising additions of "credible" musician Preston of the Ordinary Boys, noncelebrity Paris Hilton lookalike Chantelle, and smarmy hypocrite terrorist-sympathiser MP George Galloway.

But to none of these luminaries does the dubious honour of animal of the week fall, rather, this week's animal is Colobus guereza (black and white colobus or guereza) as featured on Pete Burns' "gorilla" coat. Burns, himself more mineral than animal, shocked housemates and viewers when he donned the full-length fur claiming it was gorilla. Now, I happened to be watching at the time, and with no little indignation I said to my flatmate "that's no gorilla, that's the pelts of several colobus monkeys" and went and got the photos that I took of the aforementioned simians during my trip to Kenya.

Colobus monkeys are found across the central band of Africa from Kenya in the east to the west coast. The name colobus comes from the Greek "kolobus" meaning mutilated; this was not a prediction that one day their pelts would adorn the shoulders of self-mutilated 80s pop has been, rather a reference to the fact that they have no thumbs; the monkeys seem to do just fine without thumbs, although they make shocking bridge partners. Also, I don't think Monsieur Borel ever specified the type of monkey, but I reckon these guys would probably take a little longer than infinity to type the complete works of Shakespeare, or at least have to do it without spaces.

Joke courtesy of Talha Burki:
"You know that theory about a monkey given a typewriter and infinite time typing the complete works of Shakespeare? Do you think if you gave Shakespeare a guitar and infinite time he'd come up with the complete works of The Monkees..."