Is Cheetah the Chimp Dead?



Nice family snapshot of the Tarzans at home

 Apparently the chimp who played Cheetah in the old black and white Tarzan films died last month in an animal sanctuary in Florida.

He was said to be aged 80 which caused one expert to say it couldn't possibly be Cheetah the movie monkey as "living into your 70s is pushing the limits of chimp biology".

The woman who runs the sanctuary claims Johnny Weismuller, the ex-Olympic swimmer who played the first Tarzan, left the chimp to her in his will and that the the monkey "was soothed by Christian music and also enjoyed finger painting and watching football, though she was unsure if he had any favorite teams". 

Mia Farrow, whose mother Maureen O'Sullivan, played the definitive and by far the prettiest and sexiest Jane, spread the word about the chimp's death on her Twitter account. Apparently her mother always referred to Cheetah as "that bastard". Nice.

More BOI

Here's another photo of the BOI reunion concert - this one taken by Adrienne, who is Rog's wife. I like this photo because the microphone hides my face.

Adrienne also took some video of the event which I'm keen to see. I think we're performing 'I've Just Seen a Face' by the Beatles here. Amazing that we didn't do any of our own songs, really since we wrote over 300. Problem was, Rog was the only one who could remember the words - he even remembered songs that Drew wrote and had forgotten all about, such as 'Summer Days and Summer Nights'.

Rog's most famous composition, of course, was 'Monkey on a Bike' inspired by seeing just that - a monkey on a bike - in Winson Green when he was on his way round to visit one Saturday morning. It was a very avante garde number, as I recall, with a touch of Frank Zappa about it. I must start a BOI website and post some of these long forgotten classics.