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It I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper. Or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency and is haunted by the grossest superstitions. So that Dominic was Charles Darwin, I think, friend of the show.

He sounds very miserable in that reading, Tom. God, he sounds very downbeat. And hang dog.

He's not. He's sticking up for monkeys and for apes. And I should just add that that was in the descent of man. Of course, it's the book in which he famously points out that man, too, is an ape. Yes. And so there were lots of cartoons, weren't there, in the 19th century, which portrayed Darwin as either a monkey or an ape. And we should point out, shouldn't we, at the head of this show, which we have titled history's greatest monkeys, that we are also bundling apes into the discussion and that monkeys and apes are not the same thing.

Well, this is the thing, Tom. This hangs over this whole story. So Sambrell Jr. Said to me before I started that if I introduce it, I should say that I was delighted that we were being joined today by a top baboon, Tom Holland. But I can't do that joke now. But I've done it anyway. No, sorry. But this issue, see, we've chosen the greatest primates in history, the most interesting and colorful primates in history, but not man. Not man, Tom. And also some of my choices, I'm not sure they are monkeys, because a baboon is a monkey. Is it? A baboon is a monkey.

No, baboon is an ape.

Oh, no.

So you can tell, basically, monkeys have tails and apes don't. And apes have kind of broader chests and they can swing through trees and they tend to be a little bit cleverer. Okay, so obviously humans have broad chests. Very smart. Swing through trees.

Yeah, all the time.

And also, I mean, if you find yourself with a creature that looks like either a monkey or an ape and it's dead, you can dissect it and see if it's got an appendix or not. And if it has an appendix, then it's an ape, and if it doesn't, then it's a monkey.

A monkey does not have an appendix.

No.

Interesting.

The rest is primatology.

And so a chimpanzee is an ape.

It's an ape, yes.

A lemur, however, is a monkey. Or is that just a lemur? It's got a tail, right? A macaque.

A macaque is a monkey.

Yeah.

Hold on. Is a lemur. I don't know. Isn't a lima a lemur?

Well, this isn't a thing. We should have prepared this before we started broadcasting. We're a history podcast. We're not a lemur podcast. So anyway, human beings and monkeys have obviously interacted from the dawn of time, haven't they? And people have always looked into the soul of monkeys and apes and seen themselves looking back. Can you see yourself looking back from a soul? Maybe you can.

So lemurs are primates.

Oh, you've been looking that up all this time?

An order that includes monkeys, apes and humans. So I don't think they are monkeys.

Monkeys, apes, and humans.

But they are primates.

See, that thing that you just quoted distinguishes between an ape and a human. Yeah, but a human is an ape.

I know, it's so complicated. This is why I was never zoology. It's very complicated.

We've done some complicated subjects on. The rest is history, but none. So we've got a WHOOP or a flange. A flange of top historical monkeys. And, Tom, I believe you're going to kick us off. You've got a brilliant monkey. Or have you? Well, let's find out.

So, the thing is, and I think that this will be true of all the monkeys or apes that we're looking at over the course of this show. Humans have been fascinated by them because they are like us. And so therefore, even more than dogs or cats or whatever, they can be adopted and kind of given almost human roles. And so I want to begin with, it is a macaque, which we've already mentioned as being a monkey, although it's better known in Europe as a Barbary ape. It's not an ape, but it's a kind of monkey that's indigenous to North Africa. So, land of the Berbers, but probably the most famous one is actually not in North Africa, but in Gibraltar. So the Gibraltar apes. And it's said that if they leave, then Gibraltar will fall. But they apparently were not indigenous to Gibraltar, okay, because no classical author mentions them.

So they brought over by the Moors, maybe Tom?

Yeah, maybe. But what we do know is that there were macaques to be found in the Roman Empire right the way through. And the most intriguing one, this is my first top monkey. This is a monkey whose remains were uncovered in 2001 in a pass through the Pyrenees. So, just inside Spain, but right on the border with France, it's the town of Livia, or Yulia Libica, as it was called by the Romans. And this is a grave. It had been dug out and this monkey had been laid to rest in it. It was found near to a great building, great public building, dating back to the kind of the heyday of the Roman Empire, but this had been repurposed in late antiquity. And there was this monkey, probably, they've done tests on it, about five and a half years old. So it had died early and its teeth were in a fairly shocking state, had very bad dentistry. So probably it hadn't died of old age, it hadn't had the right diet, basically.

Right.

And it's been dated to the end of the fifth century.

Okay.

So in the absolute dying days of roman power in the west. And it's been buried with various grave goods, so food, in pots, kind of various ornaments, but above all, military kit. So belt buckles.

Okay.

And various kind of iron plates, suggesting that this was armor. And belt buckles are particularly associated with barbarian burials because the Romans didn't bury people with funerary goods.

Right.

So the question is, is he a Visigothic? Is this a roman macaque or a visigothic macaque?

So hold on, Tom. It's in the Pyrenees. Is it in the Pyrenees?

It's in the Pyrenees, yeah.

Is that the vandals, the Visigoths?

It could be either, yeah. But it's definitely under roman control. So it's either barbarian, kind of foiderati. So people employed by the Romans, or Romans, who one might say are aping. Very good barbarian style.

Very good, very good. I like it.

Back of the net.

So, Tom, is the implication of this? The empire's got a manpower problem, they're recruiting monkeys. The empire is recruiting macaques? Is that what's happening?

I think it's obviously a kind of mascot for the regiment, right?

Yeah.

And clearly much loved.

Well, hold on, those are expensive stuff, right, the belt buckle and all mean.

Yeah. Well, I think he's been enrolled in the unit, I would guess.

Right.

A bit like voitesek the bear. The bear who became a corporal in the polish army in the second World War. So I think a little bit like that perhaps. So there are other examples of this as well. So the idea of giving know they're treated as pets. Throughout the history of the Roman Empire, giving them formal burial is something that you can trace throughout military bases. So buried monkeys have been found in forts in Gaul, in Germany. There's even one been found in Yorkshire. So it's an exciting fact.

That's nice. Yeah.

But they were also kept as pets, so it wasn't necessarily military. So Marshall makes a joke about a guy having an ape that looks like an ape.

Right.

What kind of ape that was? I don't know. The remains of a baby macaque were found in Pompeii.

Oh, wow. In Pompeii.

So another one was found in an acropolis outside.

Yeah.

So it's all going on. And I reckon you could make a case that when the empire fell, the ownership of macaques, of Barbary apes were seen as markers of romanitas, of kind of roman class, of the sophistication of the vanished empire. And you can see this in the kind of opposite ends of the empire. So, in Britain, quite a lot of macaques have been found in kind of, let's call them dark ages settlements, because we don't know anything about how they got there, what they were doing there. So there's one in Roxeter. Oh, Shropshire, abandoned roman town, very near you.

Yes.

Again, it's kind of been buried there and it suggests, I think, that it's a little bit like the wine going to Tintagel, that kind of thing. It's people in Britain, warlords there, wanting to lay claim to a touch of roman class. But the other example of this, I think, is at the opposite end of the empire in Syria. After the collapse of roman power there and the takeover by the Arabs and the emeads come to power. Muawi are the first emead. And then his son, Yazid, who is incredibly unpopular with Muslims today, he has a very bad reputation. So the Shia hate him because he is the guy who kills Hussein, who is the grandson of Muhammad at the battle of Kabula in Iraq. And Sunni Muslims hate him because he is seen as drunkard. He burns down the Kaaba, he does all kinds of terrible things. And so he's seen as a very bad caliph after the four righteously guided caliphs who kick everything off according to tradition. And the thing that sums up how bad a caliph Yazid is, is that he has a monkey, a favorite monkey, who he calls abucase, and he would enter him into horse races horse races.

Yeah. Although Abukhase would ride a donkey as.

A jockey, presumably as a jockey.

So he's riding a donkey and all the other guys are riding horses. And when he dies, it's said that Yazid ordered everyone in Syria to mourn him. And again, this thing, that the monkey should be given a proper formal burial, so he's kind of wrapped up in a white shroud and laid to rest. And there is a hadith, which is in the great collection of hadiths by Tabiri, where there is this ringing statement, cursed be the man who becomes our caliph while keeping as his closest friend our monkey.

It's a lesson for all of us that Tom, I think, isn't there?

I really think there is.

Crikey. Yes, crikey.

And people who listen to our episode on Baghdad may remember that Zubaida, the favorite wife of Haruna Rashid, also had a monkey. And so I think it's possible that the reason why muslim scholars are so hostile to monkeys is perhaps because it has a hint of the Roman about it.

All right, nice. Yeah. So, I don't know, seems exotic and sort of decadent, maybe. Is that it?

Kind of caesarist?

Yes, exactly.

Because the Emeas were accused again of aping the Caesars, of wanting to be like a caesar.

Very good, Tom, very good. You can never employ that pun too much, I think, in this episode.

It's the mojust, isn't it, really?

It is the mojust. Exactly. All right, that's good. Monkeys in antiquity. Would you like a more modern monkey?

Yeah, I would. Particularly because I know what you've got.

So we've both chose our own monkeys and I thought I'd go in quite big, come out fighting, as it were. Tom. So we are in London in the 1820s, and this is the life and career of a monkey called Jacko Makako.

It's an excellent name. And he's a macak, is he?

Well, we're going to come to this, Tom. Okay. There's a lot of mysteries about Jaco Makako, which I think goes to the heart of being a historian, because his story ultimately is one about the unknowability of the past. So to get into his story, we could turn, for example, to pictures of sporting life and character, 1860, by William Pitlannocks. And he has a section in this. So in this book, it's all about sort of the days of the regency and the bull baiting and cockfighting and stuff that went on. And Jacob McCako is in this book, and William Pitt Lannick says, you know, like a lot of top sportsmen, he started at the bottom and worked his way up. So he fought in the chick Lane and Tottenham Court road pits.

The fighting pits are these quite kind of low grade.

This is sort of national League, vanorama league, or whatever it's called there. He was known as the Hoxton ape, and then he fought his way up and he was finally sold to the Real Madrid, or the Wolverhampton Wanderers of fight sort of entrepreneurs, who was a guy called Charles A. Strop, who ran the Westminster pit, which I will explain in due course.

And this is the kind of the Molyneux of.

Exactly. So, Tom, now, Charles Aestrop actually told a different story himself. So this is the unknowability of the past. Charles Aestrop said that Jacko had once belonged to a sailor and they'd had a fight, Jacko and the sailor, about a saucer of milk. Jacko had bitten off three of the sailors'fingers. The sailor sold onto a silversmith from Hoxton called Carter. Under false pretenses. He said he was very meek and mild. Carter had to buy himself a sheet of iron to use as a shield when he approached Jacko, because Jacko was so fierce, and eventually he tired of being attacked by his own pet. He took him to a field and set a dog on him to try and get rid of him. But Jacko defeated the dog.

That's the obvious way to get rid of a monkey, isn't it? And a second dog that is so regency.

And so Carter thought, aha. And so he sold him to the Westminster Pit. Now, just before we get onto the Westminster pit, a quick reflection about Jacko and his name and his appearance. So his name. Can there be a lot of Jackos and Jacks in this podcast? I have to say, I think I've got about six of them and I've got one. The sense is that this is probably a generic name at the time. First of all, Jacko specifically was probably a generic name for a lemur. So lemurs were called Jacko, but also there's a slight sense of he's come from the sea, and people from the sea, of course, were called Jaktars. And as for Macaco, Macaco was a generic name at the time, applied particularly to macaques, but also to monkeys more broadly. Cockneys in the east end of London would call any monkey Macauca. And indeed, there's some evidence that Jacko Makako may actually just be a generic name that you'd call any monkey Jacko. Makako.

But it wasn't that he became so famous that we don't know.

We just don't know.

This is the unknowability, isn't.

It's the unknowability. Exactly.

But do we know what he is? Is he a macat?

Well, some people say a baboon. Some people say a mandrill or a gibbon.

A mandrill. But presumably not a bonobo.

No, because they're very peaceful.

Yeah.

He was so well known, he was the Cristiano Ronaldo of his day. So he's so well known that there are etchings of him in the British Museum. There's one by Thomas Lansir, which shows him with a muzzle and pointed ears, and people think that therefore he's probably a rhesus macaque anyway, so he's gone to the Westminster pit now, to give you a sense of the Westminster pit, very near the palace of Westminster in London set the House of parliament. It was at its peak of popularity when hundreds, if not thousands, of people would come to watch these bouts. In the 1820s, it would have badger baiting, monkey baiting, bull baiting. Its biggest star was. I was about to chap, it's actually a dog called Billy. Billy was famous for killing rats, Tom. In October 1822, he killed 100 rats in six minutes and 25 seconds. 100 rats.

Wow.

Think of that.

Goodness. So what, do they just kind of keep rats in cages and let them out?

Well, there was controversy. Some people said, actually, a lot of the rats had been poisoned beforehand, because, of course, there's huge amounts of money changing hands on all this.

Of course. Yeah. So betting syndicates and things.

It's betting syndicates. So Jacko is going into this very high pressure environment when he is billed, when people say they've got the Hoxton ape, big star, rising star, better than billy. Quite a lot of the, sort of the swells dandies and people would come to watch. So bigger and bigger money. There are adverts preserved from the time. There's one here. Jack Elwood's open to challenges from any dog in England for 100 guineas.

So he's taking on dogs. Does he take on the dog who's killed all the rats?

No, I don't think he does.

That's a different class, different league.

Yeah, different league. No. But he will take on dogs twice his weight. So Jacko is about twelve pounds in weight. That's about five and a half kilograms, and he will fight a dog of up to double that. Now, we know about his style because Lennox describes it in his book. His mode of attack, he says, was first to present his back or neck to the dog and to shift and tumble about until he could lay hold on the arm or chest when he ascended to the windpipe.

Oh, God.

Clawing and biting away, which usually occupied him for a minute and a half. And it said, after every bout, the monkey exhibited a frightful appearance, being deluged with blood. But it was that of his opponent alone. So he's got a good ring record. We think he overcame 14 different opponents. And his advert, that advert that I quoted, says of him, he has fought some of the best dogs of the day, including his combat with the wonderful bitch puss of tea cribs and the famed Oxford one. We don't know who the famed Oxford one is. Now, there is a suspicion of foul play that hangs over this. There's a splendid fellow called George Charles Grantley Fitzharding Barkley.

He sounds a swell.

He was a wig mp, Tom. He was a wig and a great enthusiast for sport. He wrote a memoir, and he says in his memoir, I believe that the dogs were injured first.

Right.

Again. To rig the matches, because the spectacle.

Of a monkey killing a dog would be more dramatic and interesting to people.

Right. And a lot of analysts, top analysts, said a monkey cannot kill a dog. A macaque will not defeat a top quality dog. This is rigged.

And so entire fortunes are being lost as a result.

Correct. So the most famous bout is the one that I alluded to there. It's the bout against Puss, who was owned by Tom Crib.

And it's confusingly a dog.

Puss is confusingly a dog. And I have to apologize to some people, because I was telling people about this last week and I had only scanned the reading, so I thought Puspa was a cat. So I've been telling people publicly that Jack Emokako had a climactic bout against a cat. Not the case.

Well, I think there's a lesson there for any young historians listening to this.

Yes. Read your sources properly, don't go public.

With your research until you've properly.

No, exactly. So Puss belonged to a guy called Tom Crib, who was himself a remarkable person. He was the all England boxing champion. And he was the fellow Tom who had defeated Tom Molyneau in Oxfordshire in 35 rounds in 1810. The famous fight held in the middle of nowhere against a former american slave.

Was that in Hampshire? I thought it was in Hampshire, wasn't it?

Shennington Hollow. I think there are multiple such fights, to be honest with you. So, Puss, he belonged to Tom Crib.

Anyway.

Who's this retired sporting star himself?

Is he now running a pub or something?

Exactly. Now, Puss is a dogger that doesn't exist anymore. He's not a bull terrier, he's a bull and terrier, which is a slightly different thing. And their great fight seems to have happened in June 1821. There was 50 pounds at stake. A lot of money, actually, in the early 1820s.

Yeah, fortune.

And our account comes from a guy who was the MP for Galway called Richard Martin, who was an old herovian, an abolitionist and a notorious do gooder.

But Herovians love torturing animals, don't they? Because that's what they did. Instead of playing sport, they go and torture cats.

At school, they went around beating cats to death.

Yeah.

But obviously this Richard Martin has been deeply affected by this because he becomes, as part of being MP for Galway, he's a passionate campaigner against cruelty to animals. He campaigned particularly against bull baiting and cockfighting, so much so that George IV nicknamed him humanity Dick. Now, he makes reference to this great fight in the House of Commons. A year later. He's introducing a prevention of cruelty to animals bill. And he says the Jacko Makako puss fight is the nadir of british cruelty to animals. And he says the fight lasted for half an hour. The dog had its caroted artery severed, bleeding, and Jacko's jaw was torn off.

Oh, God.

And he lingered for two more hours and then died. Very sad. Now, the guy who owned the Westminster pit went ballistic when he heard this. He said this was an absolute lie. He said, actually, jacko defeated Puss in two and a half minutes. Didn't kill Puss. Puss was defeated, but lived to tell the tale, and that Jacko actually died 15 months later of an unrelated illness. And Mr. A strop from the Westminster pit said, listen, I've had Jacko stuffed. He is on the mantelpiece of a Mr. Shaw of Mitcham Common. And this would not have been possible if his jaw had been ripped off.

I mean, that's something that it would be nice to see, wouldn't it? Is famous stars being stuffed after their death?

Definitely.

And donated to the grounds that they adorned.

Yeah, I would love to see that, Tom.

Wouldn't you like that?

Would you like to see Jack Grealish at Villa park?

We'd all love to see Grealish back at Villa park. Yes.

But stuffed Tom.

Yeah, well, Ian Botham, who, of course, his nickname was Guy the gorilla, you'd like to see him stuffed and put up in Taunton.

Definitely. So, anyway, that is the story of Jacko Makako, and we don't have much insight into his inner life, I think it's fair to say, tom, but I think he's a lovely window into the sporting world of George IV's England.

Yeah. I think in the episode we did on public schools, we talked about how organizations were set up to stop cruelty to animals before cruelty to children.

Yeah.

And I have to say that hearing that, you can kind of see why.

Well, humanity, Dick, was an absolutely key figure in setting up the society for the Protection of Cruelty to animals. Later the Royal Society, but not at the time, because George IV thought this was.

George IV was contemptuous.

He thought it was wokery. He thought it was madness.

Woke tosh.

Total woke tosh. Who wouldn't want to see a dog killing a hundred rats?

Well, I'm a big fan of humanity, Dick.

Okay.

Bless him. So is that it? Is that Jackie Macacco?

That's the story of Jacob McCacco. And I think the lesson, Tom, is the mysteriousness of the past, because we just don't know where he came from, what kind of monkey he was, if he was indeed a monkey, how he died. How he died.

Yeah.

I mean, there were even that guy with six names who was the son of the Earl of Barclay. He said the fight with Puss was a complete con. In his memoirs, he says, I was looking very closely, and before the fight began, Tom Cribb, the former boxer, was cradling Puss's head in a mysterious way. And I believe he cut Puss before it started to make the bout last longer and maybe to win a little bit of money and so on and so forth. Our executive producer, Jack Davenport, used to work as a sports journalist, wasn't he? He worked in the boxing world. So he may have insights into all this that we just can't even pretend to have.

Well, we should ask him and maybe mention it on the bonus. Yeah, but I think. I mean, what that, again, suggests, rather like the thing on the monkeys with the roman garrison, is the ability to identify with monkeys and to admire them and perhaps even dominate, to love them.

Yeah.

So it's obviously a branch of the entertainment industry, isn't it? Sport? It is, but so is cinema.

You've got a cinematic monkey.

So I just thought it would be interesting to look at the role that monkeys, and particularly apes, and specifically chimpanzees, have played in Hollywood and also in TV, because a bit like Rintin Tin, the dog, who we mentioned in history's top dogs, who became a big Hollywood star. Chimpanzees were featuring in Hollywood shorts right from the beginning. So in 1916, there was a famous Hollywood chimpanzee couple called Napoleon and Sally, who starred in a whole number of shorts. And there was one that came out in 1916, where Napoleon is called up to the army and Sally follows him, and there's a big battle and it all ends happily. And I haven't actually seen this film, but the account I read of it, it said it ends with Sally eating a banana, so that's kind of cheery. But there's also, on a darker note, and again, this is about the unknowability of the past, there's an orangutan. So this is the first mention of an orangutan, who is. He's called Pierre, and he is a film star in Austria. So the viennese film industry, he'd been trained for motion picture work, according to the various newspapers that cover this.

And he, and I'm quoting, reportedly nursed a grudge against a brutal trainer for a long time. And when the opportunity arose that they were alone together, high in a tree, strangled the trainer and threw his body to the ground.

What was the trainer doing up in the tree?

I don't know, Dominic, because I have googled and googled and googled this, and this is all that I can find. And basically it's a single sentence that is reproduced in multiple american newspapers and I know nothing more about it.

Oh, tantalizing, Tom, tantalizing.

So again, I mean, if we have any, maybe any austrian listeners, anyone in.

Vienna who were okay with orangutan specialists.

Again, please let us know. But of course, there have been some very famous stars who have acted opposite apes. Clint Eastwood, of course.

Yeah, Clint Eastwood, yeah.

But also our old friend Dominic.

Roll, Reagan.

Roll, Reagan. Yeah. So bedtime for Bonzo, in which he's opposite a chimp. Bonzo was played by Peggy, right? So that came out in 1951, but the following year, Bonzo goes to college. Confusingly, Peggy has been replaced and is placed by a chimpanzee called Bonzo.

No. What are the chances?

I spent hours trying to work out. Was this a coincidence? Was he named after Bonzo? I don't know. Anyway.

Crikey.

But, Dominic, I said, they didn't just appear in films, they also appeared in TV. And probably the most famous one is it was a baby chimp called Scatter. And Scatter appeared in Memphis on a TV channel there, a show called Scatter's World. And it was obviously a kind of down market version of the Mickey Mouse Club. So you could join the Scatter club. But the problem is that scatter grows up and starts to become a little bit aggressive.

Oh, no.

And there's quite a lot of throwing of fecal matter, which obviously, I guess the children would love. I mean, they're not going to put this out.

Parents wouldn't love it.

And so they need to find a new home. So the guy who, interestingly, is a fake colonel, he's a bogus colonel in Memphis. So he turns to another bogus colonel in Memphis, Colonel Tom Parker, because he knows that Elvis is very keen on having animals and is kind of developing a zoo in gracelands. And so he gives scatter to Elvis, and Elvis adores Scatter. And scatter basically has the run of gracelands. He's ripping down curtains, he's throwing his poo around, all that kind of stuff. He's chasing the housemaids. If Elvis throws parties and people have sloped off to a bedroom to get up to what they get up to, scatter will burst in and start throwing poo at them. And he's an up skirter. If a woman comes in with a skirt, he will run up and flip the skirt up and peer up inside.

Oh, my word. That's bad behavior.

Which Elvis finds hilarious, right? Yeah, it's very bad behavior. So scatter is a difficult character, I think. And so much so that in the end, he vanishes from gracelands. And there are conflicting accounts about what happened. So one says that he's banished by Elvis to a climate controlled room where he dies of a broken heart because he's missing the king, as you would.

That's sad. That is sad.

And another one is that he bites a maid and the maid then poisons him cranky.

That's very.

Yeah, great drama. But again, Dominic, I mean, as you said, it's the unknowability of the past. I mean, I guess there's a serious point that monkeys are sufficiently interesting that people note them and tell stories about them, but they're not so interesting that people trouble to actually find out what genuinely happened. Do you think?

Yeah, I think that's true. Because a dog, if a king had a dog, the dog wouldn't even show up in the sources at all. People wouldn't think to record it. Whereas a chronicler might say of somebody, he had a monkey, but then we wouldn't know where the monkey came from or what happened to the monkey, would we?

But Elvis's human associates. We know all about them. I mean, everybody who's ever met him has been chronicled.

And, Tom, is there a well known star who's obsessed with Elvis and emulates Elvis, who has a monkey of his own?

There is. And this, of course, we've talked about Jack O. So here is another Jacko. But confusingly, this Jacko is the human. So of course, it's Michael Jackson.

I hadn't thought of that. Very good.

And Michael Jackson is directly inspired by the example of Elvis and having scatter. And so Michael Jackson says that he wants to have a little baby chimp. And this chimp comes from a Texas research facility. It's only eight months old. And Michael Jackson, of course, calls him bubbles. And in 1988, when Michael Jackson moves into Neverland, Neverland ranch, so very gracelands again, Bubbles goes with him and he sleeps in a crib in Jackson's room. Supposedly he wears a nappy, what our american listeners would call a diaper. He sits at the dining table. He comes with Michael Jackson into his private cinema to watch films and he sits there snacking on candy, which can't be good for the diaper, is it?

No.

And he becomes, I think, much more than scatter becomes a part of Elvis's image. I mean, bubbles becomes a really important part of Michael Jackson's image.

Oh, totally. I don't think of scatter when I think of Elvis, but I do think of bubbles as an emblematic of Michael Jackson's weirdness and infantilism.

Yes. So I think Michael Jackson would be pleased about that because I guess he was wanting to trump the king.

Yes.

So you're right that there is this kind of infantilizing thing. So he goes to Japan and has tea with the mayor of Osaka and takes Bubbles with him. And the three of them kind of sit there and the mayor of know says, well, I've never had tea with a chimpanzee before and he can't come to Britain because the quarantine laws won't permit it. So that's very sad. But I think there are all kinds of stories told about bubbles that it's hard to know whether they're true. And that reflects the fact that Michael Jackson's oddness is such that it kind of encouraged all stories. So there's stories that Bubbles had his own bodyguard, that Michael Jackson had taught him to moonwalk, that Michael Jackson was doing a duet with Freddie Mercury and kept asking Bubbles what he thought. And Freddie Mercury was so pissed off that he stormed off.

Right.

Yeah, I think this is actually true. Because I think that track was subsequently released after Freddie Mercury's death. But bubbles a bit like scatter, because this is what chimpanzees do. He grows up, he becomes aggressive. He gets into the whole kind of throwing poo at the housemaids thing, this running thing that the housemaids in Rockstar's palaces hate chimpanzees, basically. And so eventually he has to be retired. So 2003, Bubbles is sent off to a pet trainer. 2005, he is sent to a sanctuary for apes in Florida, where he stays.

To this day, still alive.

Yeah.

That's nice.

So I looked up the site, the website for the center for Great Apes website, because you can sponsor him.

He's not under an alias or something? No.

He's there as bubbles and all these kind of various apes. And they describe them and if you want to, you can sponsor them. And it says of bubbles that he will occasionally spit water or throw sand with amazing accuracy at strangers just to see how they react.

Yeah.

So he's still a bit of a funster, but bubbles caregivers consider him to be autistic, gentle and shy. And I think this is really sad. He often will turn his back when he sees a.

So, yeah, he's traumatized by paparazzi, ruined.

By his experience of fame.

Yeah, that's what fame does to you, Tom.

Sad story, but not as sad as Jaco Macac.

See, Tom, you're projecting there. We don't know that, Jacko Makako, but it's a possibility.

He had his jaw ripped off. I mean, I know he might not have done, but he got stuffed.

Yeah, that's all true. Our animal rights listeners will be horrified by this conversation. We should probably move on before our audience completely plummets. Join us after the break for more exciting historical monkeys.

See you then. Hello. Welcome back to our episode on History's Top Monkeys. We've had a fair few, but, Dominic, we've got more top monkeys. We've got them.

Yeah, we do. So I thought what we would do now is we're a cosmopolitan podcast. I think we haven't done a lot of south african history on. The rest is history. And I think we should. And I've got a couple of south african monkeys that I think are extraordinary characters. Tom. So we mentioned in the first half that our executive producer, Jack Davenport, is called Jack. And I've actually got two more monkeys, both called Jack. So one is Jack the signalman. I'll just mention him quite briefly. Jack the signalman is a baboon.

Oh, brilliant. To get a baboon on the show. Yeah, great.

To get a baboon on the rest of his history. He worked for the Cape Town to Port Elizabeth railway.

When you say he worked in the.

1880S, well, so he belonged to a man called James wide. James wide was nicknamed was Jumper because he used to jump between the railway carriages. And one day he mistimed his jump. Oh, no, he lost both his legs.

Oh dear.

So he bought this monkey, this baboon, to help him as a carer. The baboon would push him around in a trolley and he taught the baboon, Jack how to use the signals. Now, according to the periodical the railway signal, Tom, who knew from 1908, James wide quote, trained the baboon to such perfection that he was able to sit in his cabin stuffing birds, etc. Eat water, while the animal, which was chained up outside, pulled all the levers and points. Now, one day somebody saw this on the railway and they complained to the railway authorities and they sent the Cape Town supporters of the railway sent an investigator called George B. Howe, and he wrote in his report, Jack knows the signal whistle as well as I do every one of the levers. It was very touching to see his fondness for his master. As I drew near, they were both sitting on the trolley, the baboon's arms round his master's neck, the other stroking wide's face. So it's quite a touching story. He was officially employed by the railway. He was paid twenty cents a day and half a bottle of beer a week. And it is said that in nine years with the railway, he never made a single mistake.

So there's a lesson there for Britain's railways, Tom.

Yes. So the government could just sack everyone involved on the railways and bring in baboons.

Exactly.

I mean, I was wondering how people on the trains felt about this.

Disturbed. This guy had complained to the authorities.

But if you're on a train and you're approaching a point that's operated by a baboon, I'd feel a bit nervous. I mean, I don't want to seem baboon ish.

No, but in a sense, Tom, aren't we always getting trains operated by mean?

In a very real sense we are, yes, I guess we are.

I mean, I'm doing a podcast with a load of apes right now. I mean, so are you.

Yeah.

So anyway, I really wanted to focus on another south african baboon because South Africa is very strong in this department and this is a chap called Corporal Jackie.

When you say chap, do you mean a baboon?

Yeah, he's a baboon, but I'm inclusive in my language. He lived on a farm in South Africa with a chap called Albert Ma, who looked after him. And Albert Ma was drafted in 1915, was conscripted to go to the great War, and he took Jackie, his baboon, with him and he became a mascot for the third south african infantry regiment, who were from the transvile.

So very like the Romans.

Very like the Romans. Because he was given a cap, his own rations, he was given a paybook. And I've got all this from the south african military history website, the observation post. So a big shout out to them. Jackie wore his uniform with some panache. He was also known to light up a cigarette or pipe for his pals. He had a sharp salute for any officer passing him. He'd stand at ease when commanded to do so, placing his feet apart and hands behind his back in the military style. And at the mess table, he used a knife and fork and a teacup in the proper manner. And I have to say to people, if you Google Corporal Jackie, he looks hilarious because he's just this baboon looking completely nonplussed when it's military, because in.

Planet of the apes, they're soldiers of the orangutans, aren't they? Yeah. But it might be slightly similar.

I guess so, yes. He saw a lot of action. So he first saw action at the Somme in late 1916. He and Albert Ma lived to tell the tale. Then they were sent to Egypt and Albert Ma was shot in the shoulder in Egypt, and Jackie was with him and Jackie licked the wound while others went to get help.

And he wasn't scared. He didn't run away.

No. Well, there's a terrible story coming up. So they went back to France, and they were in France in the trenches, and there was a huge explosion in the trenches and some shrapnel hit Jackie in the leg and arm, and stretcher bearers came and he was trying to sort of burrow into the ground to escape more firing.

How awful.

He wouldn't allow himself to be taken away by the stretch, but eventually they did, and the doctor was. So he's kind of working, patching up all these people. They bring a baboon in. Obviously made an impression on the doctor because he wrote an account of it and he said it was a pathetic sight. The little fellow carried by his keeper lay moaning in pain, the man crying his eyes out in sympathy. You must do something for him. He saved my life in Egypt. He nursed me through dysentery. The baboon was badly wounded. The left leg hanging with shreds of muscle. Another jagged wound in his right arm. They gave him chloroform. They had a big debate. Will this kill him? That? They gave him chloroform. He lapped up the chloroform as if it had been whiskey. And he was well under in a remarkably short time. It was a simple matter to amputate his leg with scissors. And then I cleaned the wounds and dressed them as well as I could. So Corporal Jackie, he's lost his leg. So the chloroform, whatever he wakes up, they send them back to England, convalesce. Him and Albert Maher, he's a tremendous celebrity in England.

He marches.

He doesn't march, he hops.

Presumably in the Lord mayor's show. The Lord mayor's parade. Tom. He ends up raising money. They go around the country raising money for the Red Cross. People were paid half a crown each to shake Jackie by the hand and five shillings. If you paid five shillings, you got to kiss him.

Wow.

So people are paying this. They raise a lot of money. They go back to South Africa. And again he was present. He hopped through another parade, a peace parade in Church Square, Pretoria, on the 31 July, 1920. He was given a medal, and they went back to their family farm. There's a sad coder to this story, though. Both Ma and Jackie were a bit affected by shell shock. And actually, in May 1921, there was a tremendous storm over the velt of the high velt. Tom. And a great crash of thunder. And Jackie obviously thought this was the return of kind of the Germans. And he had a heart attack and died.

Oh, dear. I was going to ask about shell shock.

Yeah.

I had not realized that baboons could get shell shocked.

Why wouldn't they if other apes can get shell shock? Tom?

Yeah.

So he's a very impressive character, I think, Corporal Jackie.

Very.

Yeah. He doesn't seem to have taken part.

In fighting, but he's tending to the men.

He's tending to the men and keeping.

Their spirits up and saluting and everything.

Yeah. And eating his rations with a knife and fork. And generally behaving, I think, very well.

Good. Well, I mean, I like to think there's a kind of bond between him and the unknown macaque in the Pyrenees.

Yeah, that's nice. It's a nice link.

Yeah. So these have all been very inspiring stories. Stories that are all about the bond between human and ape or monkey or whatever. But my next story is a darker one. So we're in the napoleonic wars and we are in Hartleypool, which is in County Durham.

Tom, I know where this is going.

And the good people of Hartleypool, fishermen mostly, they look out to sea and there they observe a french ship. A storm is brewing. The french ship gets dashed against the rocks. Everyone drowns except for a single survivor. And this survivor is a monkey. And again, pursuing the military theme, or in this case, a nautical theme, the monkey is in french uniform.

Right.

So he's kind of dressed in a marines uniform.

Yeah.

And this alarms the locals, who have never seen a monkey and indeed have never seen a french person.

Well, this is a thing. How would you know?

Exactly. And so they assume that this strange creature in the military uniform, that this is what the French looked like. Hairy, talking strange gibberish, ill groomed, not speaking English.

Yeah.

So they assume that he must be a spy. And all the fishermen gather around on the beach and they start interrogating the monkey. And of course, the monkey can't answer their questions. And this simply confirms for them that he's a spy.

Yeah, you can't take chances, Tom.

And a Frenchman. Yeah. And so they hang the monkey. And from this point onwards, the people of Hartlepool are known as monkey hangers. Now, listeners may be wondering, is this story actually true or is it invented by their near neighbors?

Don't do this, Tom. Come on. Don't do this.

Well, who knows, Dominic? Who knows? A very similar story is told about a number of isolated fishing communities along the length of Britain. So there's one in Cornwall, there's one in Scotland. I mean, same kind of thing. And there is a song that is very popular in the music halls of Britain in the mid 19th century, sung by a guy called Ned Corvin. Shall I sing it for you?

I think everybody would enjoy that, not just me.

In former times, midwar and strife, when french invasion threatened life and always armored to the knife, the fishermen hung the monkey o. Durham. Durham. Durham, Dar. Durham. Durham. Durham da.

That's a nice bit.

Can you guess what the next line is?

Is it Durham? Durham, Durham Da. It is Durham.

Durham. Durham da. The fisherman hung the monkey o. And so it goes on for quite a while and I won't sing anymore. And I think it is a generally held theory that actually, this story emerges from the song rather than the other way, so.

Oh, how interesting that is. The story was created to explain the song.

Yeah. I think the idea for the song came first, but there is a massive.

Twist to this story. Isn't there about Hartler, Paul and monkeys?

There is a massive twist, because actually, this monkey who gets hanged not only becomes a real character, but becomes the first ape in this episode to win political office.

Yes, indirectly, I think it's fair to say.

And the story begins on the 31 October 1999 with Hartlepool United Football club. Again, this kind of link between monkeys and sport, also a kind of running theme. And the football club want a mascot. And they decide, well, let's have a monkey, this hanged monkey. And so they call the monkey hangus, so h apostrophe Angus hangus. And they employ various people to play this mascot. And the key figure in this story, a historic figure, is the second guy who wins the chance to play hangus. This is a man called Stuart Drummond, who is a local from Hartley Pool. He's studied foreign languages, he's worked on cruise ships. So he's a man of the world, and he's very excited at the opportunity. He's a big Hartley pool fan. He dresses up as hangus every week. He gambles around on the pitch. He is twice escorted by the police out of the ground for having simulated sex.

Oh, no.

Once with a steward and once with an inflatable doll. And when Hartleypool are playing Chester away, so they're at Chester, Hangus is asked to perform the halftime lottery draw. And he gets so into his role that he pulls all the tickets out of the tumbola, throws it up the air, and walks away without picking a winner. So very authentic. Yeah, very authentic monkey behavior.

He's really in character. It's method.

Yeah. So he's tremendously popular. He's probably Britain's most popular football mascot and a source of great pride, not just to the fans of Hartleypool United, but the whole city. So when in 2002, this is when the Blair government is very keen on directly elected mayors, and Hartlepool decides that, yeah, we'll go for it, we'll have a directly elected mayor. And so Hangus wants to run for Mayor Hangus, aka Stuart Drummond, and he's told that he can't enter the mayoral race as hangus. He has to do it as Stuart Drummond. But he campaigns dressed as the monkey the whole way through.

And he does it as a stunt. Gets a couple of things because it's a stunt for the football club. But also when Tony Blair introduced elected mayors, there was a lot of public antipathy to it, wasn't there? Because a lot of people thought, oh, it's an extra layer of government. We don't need it's. Expensive. And there was a sort of protest against.

Yes. So the whole thing has been pushed by Peter Mandelson, who is Tony Blair's kind of svengali emance, Greece, and he's the MP for Hartley pool. So he's very much in favor of it. So it's a kind of a Peter Mandelson against local government embroilio going on. The chairman of Hartley Pool United. You're right, he thinks this is a tremendous stunt. So he puts the money up because you have to pay a deposit if you're running to be an MP, and if you don't get sufficient votes, then you lose it. So he puts the money up for that and it is done as a stunt. So the campaign slogan is vote for hangus. He gives the monkeys, and there isn't much of a manifesto, but one of them is that every school child in the town will have a banana. But there are some kind of serious elements. They're very keen on promoting sports facilities, so they want to improve sports facilities for people generally in the town. There's a local sports center that's threatened with closure, and also they want to cut the number of councilors and the local government. So again, that's the kind of idea that.

It's a kind of anti government thing, really.

Yes.

And amazingly, he beats the labor candidate by 500 votes. And Mandelsohn is furious and takes Stuart Drummond to one side, calls him a disgrace, says, you've made the whole town a laughingstock. And I think Stuart Drummond somehow reveals that he speaks french and german. And then Peter Mandelson suddenly thinks, oh, actually, this is a guy who will raise our profile on the international stage, and suddenly turns around and says, it's tremendous for Hartley pool. And he's know he's a great success. He makes a great fist of it.

He won three terms.

Yes, he did. He did. And labor is so cross at always losing that eventually the councilors convene a referendum to abolish the directly elected mayor. So Hangus is the only. The only mayor, the one and only elected mayor.

I'm just looking at the headline in the northern Echo. Monkey is mayor. The National Post in Canada reports it. Monkey wins mayoralty, regains human form.

But again, it's this theme, isn't it, of kind of the permeability of humans and apes and monkeys and things?

Well, actually, that's a beautiful link, actually, Tom, into the next little monkey story that I had, because I think there is a kind of. It's the idea of the slippage, isn't there? Between the categories of monkey and human. So 1964, an art gallery in Gothenburg exhibited four paintings by the french avantgarde artist Pierre Brasso. And it was quite well reviewed. So the Gutterberg Poston sent Ralph Anderberg its top critic. And Anderberg wrote, brasso paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brushstrokes twist with furious fastidiousness. He's an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer. And it was therefore embarrassing for when it turned out that these paintings had been done by somebody called Peter, who was a four year old chimpanzee from Boros Zoo in Sweden. And this was a hoax that had been constructed by a journalist called Daka Axelson, who was journalist at Gothenburg's tabloid newspaper the Gutenberg's Tidneyan. So they must have very much enjoyed basically fooling the broadsheet. The posh broadsheet. Apparently what happened was that he'd persuaded the zookeeper to give Peter some paint and a brush. PEter initially ate the paint, very surrealist. But eventually it was persuaded to smear it onto the canvas.

Now apparently I read at the museum of Hoaxes website, Tom, top quality research, that Peter had a load of bananas with him. And the more bananas he ate, the more creative and the more progressive his artistic vision became. A swedish art investor actually bought one of these pictures for the equivalent of about 500 pounds.

I mean, were they good?

No, they're terrible. But actually, do you know what? It's the 1960s, so who can tell the critic, to be fair, Rolf Vanderberg, who appraised them, said when it was revealed, he said they're still the best pictures in the exhibition.

Yeah, that's funny.

And it made me think about. So the most famous artistic monkey these days is a painting rather than artist. Do you remember the story of the eke Homo?

Yes, the thing of Jesus, which was.

Restored by an elderly lady, a 1930s fresco. And she basically turned him into a monkey. So that's probably the most famous artistic monkey.

There was another chimpanzee that actually impressed Picasso. And this I think was sponsored by Desmond Morris.

Oh, very good.

Who wrote the naked ape.

Yes.

So Desmond Morris was an amazing guy. He was a surrealist painter. I mean he was a friends, I think, with Picasso. But he was also, I think he was the keeper of the mammals at London Zoo and a primatologist.

I mean, his book the Naked Ape, which I think was published in 1967, a very 60s book.

It's very groovy, isn't it? It is all about how earlobes are erogenous.

It is, but it's very. People dis it now. But the introduction, there are 193 living species of monkeys and apes. 192 of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape selfnamed Homo sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones. He's proud that he has the biggest brain of all the primates, but attempts to conceal the fact that he also has the biggest penis.

Yes. So the highest ratio of penis size to body mass of any primate, apparently.

Yes.

Very exciting.

So, Desmond Morris, I mean, like the lots of 60s stuff, it's kind of sex obsessed, isn't it? Yeah.

Well, he says that humans are naked because it enhances tactile pleasure.

Is that his claim?

Yeah. And he says that the human breast is rounded because it enhances sexual pleasure or something. I mean, it's so 60s because it comes out in 1967, I think, doesn't it?

I think it's fair to say that feminist critics have a strong disliked ape. Not unreasonably, but I think it was an interesting book, and it's very much of its time, because thinking of human beings as essentially animals is no better than any other animal, and, as it were, the bestial impulses in the human soul. That's a very 1960s, post second world war kind of fascination.

And he, Desmond Morris, like Bubbles, is still alive, is he? Yeah, he lives in Ireland.

So two characters from this podcast are still with us and may well both be listening to the rest of his history right now.

Be nice to think, wouldn't it?

Yeah. So, actually, mention of Desmond Morris brings us to our final ape, and the most important, and actually not an ape. It's a monkey.

It's orangutan, isn't it?

Orangutan.

So that's an ape.

Okay. I'm not. I'm primatologist Thomas. I think everyone can tell by now. So Jenny was an orangutan. In London Zoo in the late 1830s, the London zoo was the world's oldest scientific zoo, founded famously by Sir Stamford Raffles Tom, the founder of Singapore. And Jenny had arrived from Borneo at the end of 1837. A sailor called Mr. Moss sold her for 150 pounds. She was probably three years old, and she was put in a. All the animals in those days were kept indoors, so she was kept in a heated giraffe's house. She wore human clothing, and she drank tea. So very corporal Jackie behavior. And in March, 1838, the 20 eigth of March. She has a very well known visitor and it's the same person that you began this podcast with, Tom, so we're bookending it. Beautifully constructed episode. It is Charles Darwin. So Charles Darwin, he's come back from the Beagle expedition two years earlier and he's been writing in his notebooks thoughts about evolution, about the possible links between humanity and other primates for about twelve months or so. And he writes to his sister about this first encounter with Jenny and he describes her in human terms.

So the keeper offers her an apple. She threw herself on her back, kicked and cried like a naughty child. She looked very sulky. The keeper says, jenny, if you stop balling and being a good girl, I'll give you the apple. Darwin says she certainly understood every word of this and like a child, she had great work to stop whining. She at last succeeded and then got the apple. Now, orangutans at that point are pretty unknown to Europeans. They have been a mystery about 16 hundreds. It was a dutch doctor called Jacobus Bontius who went to Java and wrote about orangutans, the wild man of the woods, that kind of stuff. And naturalists had often said, gosh, they are very similar to humans. They've been really been unsettled by them, actually. So Linnaeus, when he did his classification, he had put orangutans and other apes in the 8th century in the same genus as humans. Russo not a friend of the rest is history, I would say. Russo no, he said, could they be a race of genuinely wild men? In other words, are they basically human? Jean Baptiste Lamarck, kind of pioneer of evolutionary thinking in some ways.

He said, could they be the ancestors of humans? Are these our ancestors who have somehow been preserved? And all of these ideas are clearly knocking around Darwin's brain. And he comes back. He keeps coming back. That's the fascinating thing to the zoo to look at. Jenny, we know from his notebooks. He says he describes her always as a child and he says she can do things like groom herself, she can use tools. He's really struck by her emotions, so he's convinced that she's jealous. He says she will make peevish noises if she sees other people getting attention. She shook the cage and knocked her head against the door because she could not get out. Jealous of attention to other. And then the thing that he's most struck by, they give her a mirror or he gives her a mirror and he says she was astonished beyond measure looking in this mirror. And Darwin was convinced that she recognized herself. She stuck out her lips, like kissing, to the glass. She put her hand over the glass, she rubbed it. She put her body in different kinds of positions, admiring herself in the glass. All of this is massively playing on his mind.

He's got multiple notebooks, and this is one called Notebook C. And he writes in this after visiting Jenny, let man visit orangutan in domestication. Hear expressive wine. See its intelligence when spoken to, as if it understands every word said. See its affection, see its passion and rage, sulkness and very actions to despair. And then let man boast of his proud preeminence. Man, in his arrogance, thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity more humble, and, I believe, true, to consider him, created from animals.

There you go.

And there you have it.

Yeah.

So Jenny died from an illness a year later, 1839, and was replaced. The cynicism of zoo's dog was replaced by another orangutan called Jenny, who wasn't visited by Darwin, but was visited by Queen Victoria. But that last point that Darwin makes, that's obviously the real fascination, isn't it, that we see ourselves looking back at us. It's a brilliant way of contextualizing our own kind of boastful narcissism. If you've ever been to a zoo, I actually am transfixed by watching gorillas and chimps and all that kind of thing. Because precisely for that reason, because they are so human. Or rather, we are so ape like.

Well, we are. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Well, brilliant, Dominic, thanks very much. So those are history's top monkeys and apes.

Of that there can be no doubt. Tom.

We hope you've enjoyed it. And we'll be back next week to look at more history of apes. More apes, specifically, homo sapiens.

All right, bye.