The animals falling out two by two

The trouble at London Zoo shows no sign of letting up. It all started five years ago, when the Boa Constrictor was reportedly ‘deeply upset’ at rumours being spread about that he was poisonous.

Lawyers for the Boa Constrictor immediately released a statement on his behalf. ‘Anyone who knows the Boa will testify to the fact that he is entirely non-venomous.

‘From time to time, he may have swallowed monkeys, pigs and ocelots with a single gulp, but that is neither here nor there. he has always treated them with the greatest respect. Why else would they have queued up to be swallowed? And to this day, they remain close to his heart.’

But a senior monkey, who wishes to remain anonymous, claimed a close relation who had been swallowed in this way would never have agreed to this procedure in advance. ‘She was a happy-go-lucky monkey with so much to offer. The last thing she would have wanted would have been to be gulped down.’

elsewhere in the zoo, there were other fall-outs between animals. In the aquarium, a new monkfish was reportedly ‘devastated’ after a visitor was overheard describing her as ‘plug ugly’.

Friends say she hid behind a large rock in the aquarium for ‘a number of days’, only venturing out after closing time, once the visitors had gone home.

It now seems that the monkfish suspected that the insult had been circulated by a popular exotic fish in a neighbouring tank.

‘They were meant to be colleagues, but this exotic male fish, the Arowana, had had it in for the monkfish from the very start,’ reveals a reliable source. ‘So the monkfish had no option but to hire her own top PR.’

This PR had previously been employed by a senior shark, who hoped to restore his public image following an unfortunate incident with a one-legged visitor, whose lawyers say he had entered the zoo with both legs intact.

At first, the monkfish’s PR initiative produced some notable results, including a 15-page spread in hello! magazine, headed Beautiful Monkfish Welcomes Us Into her Charming home.

Full-colour photographs showed the monkfish in various flattering poses against exotic backdrops.

In the accompanying piece, the monkfish was said to have laughed at the idea she and the Arowana had fallen out. ‘We may be on different paths at the moment, but I will always be there for him.’

elsewhere in the zoo, a war of words has broken out between a veteran giraffe called Grizelda and a chimpanzee called Tommy.

The giraffe was reportedly ‘upset and mortified’ that Tommy had described her neck as ‘much too long’. First, Grizelda tried walking around in a polo neck, but she found visitors pointing at her neck even more. At this stage, Grizelda hired a top PR at some expense. Stories soon began to appear in celebrity-based magazines about how ‘short and sweet’ and ‘discreetly beautiful’ her neck now was.

In 2021 Grizelda the Giraffe was ‘surprised and delighted’ to win the annual Shortest Neck Of The Year Award from Safari magazine, though it was later discovered that six months earlier she had anonymously donated £25,000 to the magazine’s charity appeal. It was only when Tommy the Chimpanzee began reading stories about his ‘appalling tablemanners’ that the war between the two former colleagues began to get out of hand.

Tommy immediately contacted top PR Matthew Freud, whose second-in-command was, as it happens, also a chimpanzee. his name was Brutus, and he was wellknown for masterminding careerboosting A-list tea parties.

Within weeks, Tommy the Chimpanzee was seen welcoming top celebrities including David and Victoria Beckham, Lord Sugar, Joan Collins, Phillip Schofield and Carol Vorderman to his starstudded tea party at the Savoy hotel.

Specially-filmed videos, showing Tommy graciously passing a cupcake to Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and pouring tea for the Duchess of York, gained more than 250,000 ‘likes’, and rumours soon sprang up that he would be nominated for an MBe — the first chimpanzee to be honoured in this way for more than 30 years.

By now, an estimated 40 per cent of animals in London Zoo, including three sealions, a spider and a porcupine had all been in touch with public relations companies, intent on boosting their public images.

Where would it all end? I shall continue this extraordinary story in my next column.