Me Cheeta: Aping the Hollywood memoir with true wit

A shout-out on Twitter for book recommendations yielded an interesting crop of titles. One stands out for its hilarity… Me Cheeta: The Autobiography is billed as the “incredible, moving and hilarious story of Cheeta the Chimp, simian star of the big screen” and a “behind-the-scenes romp through the golden years of Hollywood”.

I remember Cheeta from the Tarzan flicks I used to watch as a kid, but had no idea that the 76 year old chimp has survived both Tarzan and Jane and is now living out his twilight years as an abstract painter in Hollywood.

James Lever has written a novel disguised as his memoir, which is — so the publishers say — “Full of humour, wit and emotion… the truly unique tale of a monkey stolen from deepest Africa and forced to make a living among the fake jungles and outrageous stars of Hollywood’s golden age.”

A novel masquerading as a monkey’s autobiography? Intriguing. An insight into tinseltown in the 1930’s and 40’s? Tantalising. I want to know more.

Carole Cadwalladr at The Observer calls this “a rather joyous satire” and Cheeta’s observations “rude, funny, vindictive, revelatory, brutal”. Anne Billson at The Telegraph finds the best part of the book “laugh-out-loud hilarious”. This sounds like a blast — I’m going to snap up a copy and report back on whether this chimp should stick to finger painting — or actually has a future in writing.

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