It’s weird and depressing - the realisation that
there’s nothing in life that can’t be sold as
a commodity to the media by Max Clifford.
Teenage pregnancy, cancer, death: wherever there’s
a fee for the protagonist (and their publicists)
and extra sales for the tabloid, there’s a way.
You look at the newspapers and just don’t know
what’s real, what’s a PR stunt and what’s a scam.
And just when we thought it couldn’t get any
worse, a real bombshell hits us: Cheeta the
Chimp, the 86 year-old ex-movie star with the
best-selling autobiography and the range of art
work (one of which graces our walls) is a fake!

Writer R D Rosen thinks the chimp’s late
trainer Tony Gentry passed off “Cheeta” as a
star. There were, in fact, many different chimps
who played Cheeta and in movies like Dr Doolittle.
“Cheeta” was not born in 1932 but around 1960,
never performed in films, but performed as a pier
attraction in Santa Monica. So what was the
main giveaway for Rosen between movie Cheeta
and “Cheeta”? “The ears were different”.