Sometimes people come up to me and ask ‘what came first, the chicken or the Egg?’ which is an odd question as chickens have been around in one form or another for hundreds of thousands of years, whereas Egg only came to live with us in 2005.

My friend Egg

Draw your chair up and hand me my violin.

Prince William and Kate have been looking for some new art of distinguished guests and friends to hang in their new castle, so I have been recently obliged to sit for a portrait. I do find it a little tedious to sit in such an attitude for so long a period of time, but it is all for a good cause as I would not dream of denying the future king my likeness upon his wall. I hope they hang it up next to Rolf Harris’s portrait of William’s nan.

I received a double tip-off the other day, courtesy of both A Girl In Winter and Katiepops, that life-sized models of Munkeh have been spotted for sale at various locations around the country. These ‘stunt-munks’ are made to roughly the same dimensions as Munkeh, and though not as cute, would still make a good monkey-mascot for those bereft of a monkey companion.

I set off on the investigative trail to try and track down one of these imitation Munkehs.

Looking for a Munkeh lookalike

Now, my hidden camera received some interference whilst in the store, but I can assure you that there were stacks and stacks of imitation Munkehs all over the store. What’s more, the Stunt-Munks were wearing a rather snazzy Christmas jumper, so I invited one to accompany me home where he immediately made the gift of his jumper to Munkeh, who he seemed to hold in some reverence.

Munkeh seems a little suspicious of his slightly wonky doppleganger, so I haven’t told him about the entire army of such Stunt-Munks that I encountered in the shop, but the one that followed us home doesn’t seem like a bad sort, really, and Munkeh does like his new jumper.

Munkeh's new jumper

He’s even been wearing it to social occasions:

Munkeh's 'going out' jumper

If you’d like your own life-size model of Munkeh, I entreat you to go down to your local supermarket and look there. They are well dressed and even come bearing a free box of tea, which you can give to your nan,

World of Monkey t-shirts, featuring your host, now available on Amazon

Here’s an exciting new development – World of Monkey T-shirts from Amazon!

I’m so excited to see my face on a t-shirt and I hope that any Friends of Monkey might pop by and have a look and let me know what they think. If I see you walking down the road wearing one of these fab t-shirts one day I will be sure to say hello. They are available in both ‘Sky High Blue’ (above) and ‘Monkey Brown’ (below), and for the low price of £12.99, which just about buys you a fried breakfast nowadays. Unlike fried breakfasts, though, World of Monkey t-shirts make you look better.

Monkey t-shirt in 'Monkey Brown'

If they went down to my diminutive size, I’d never take mine off.

About a year and a half ago, my human friend Mimi knitted me a cardigan. It was blue with long sleeves. It was warm when I was cold, and so I was thankful.

My cardigan

Mimi had only been knitting for a few months, so did her best. She made it out of the thinnest wool she had, but it was still quite bulky on me because I am not very big. And she had to write the cardigan pattern from scratch, because there aren’t many patterns for cardigans for 30cm tall monkeys on the market.

The monkey measurements

But though I quite liked my cardigan, and at first people said it was great, after a while my friends started saying ‘oh, you must hate wearing that silly looking cardigan, Monkey’, and ‘look at how stiff and rough it looks – the shoulders are too big’, etc.

I didn’t hate wearing my cardigan, no, but the more people said that, the less I wanted to wear it, until, after a while, I decided to try and hide it. I did this because it made me feel embarrassed to wear the cardigan, and I didn’t want Mimi to feel upset that I didn’t want to wear something she spent so long knitting.

But I couldn’t throw it away, so I hid it beneath the bed, and made do with being cold.

Then, one day, Mimi came in from the bedroom with something blue and a little dusty in her hand, she had found my cardigan.

‘Look, Monkey! Oh, we’ve found your cardigan – you can be lovely and warm again!’

In a way I was happy that she’d found it, because so much hard work went into making me a cardigan all of my very own, but what could I say when she encouraged me to wear it when I went to see my friends in Morecambe?

So, I’ve hidden it again. It’s under the sofa, far enough back so that it won’t be accidentally hoovered up, because I don’t want to really lose it. But hopefully Mimi will see that I am starting to get cold now that it is November, and I really could do with something to keep warm. If she can’t find my cardigan, maybe she’ll make me something new. Perhaps something like Giantmonk’s snazzy tank top, so that my friends can’t say how stiff it looks, or that the shoulders don’t fit, or ask if I can even move my arms when I wear it.

Thanks for keeping me warm though, blue cardigan.

My blue, buttoned, slightly stiff but well loved cardigan.

Egg

I’d like you to meet Egg. Egg has lived at Monkey Towers for many years now, but I have had trouble convincing him that he should become part of the World of Monkey staff. It took some careful negotiations, and a bonus package of one toffee muffin and a banana milkshake for every post that he makes, but eventually I convinced him that joining the editorial team here was not such a scary proposition.

Egg is a shy and quiet fellow, so I am not sure that his posts will be all that wordy, but he’s a dab hand with the camera.  Go on Egg, take a self portrait to introduce yourself to the readers:

Egg. World of Monkey's newest member of staff.

… sit around in your pants all day watching football on TV

Giantmonk likes to relax in pants

It is that time that comes around only once every four years.

It is the World Cup!

We are 26 games in, half way through the group stages, so I thought I’d fill you all in with my insight and punditry on this most special of sporting events.

Firstly, beer is nice.

Mmmm, lovely monkey beer. Makes even the boring matches fly by.

It makes even the England games bearable.  Well, nearly bearable.  I like how England decided that in this World Cup they were going to give every other country a sporting chance by fielding a team of grandmothers and builders rather than the sporting professionals that you might expect, and Fabio Capello’s decision to lure the rest of the world into a false sense of security seems to be working.  Let’s hope he remembers to field a team of actual players for the next match though eh?

After the last England match I went to visit me old’ mucker, Roy Hodgson, to ask him for some tips that I might pass on to a’capello and the choir boys, but as we were talking his head started to fill with hot air and he floated away.

Roy Hodgson, full of hot air.

I assume he was going to try and hot-air balloon his foot-balling brain to the South Africa base camp to give the boys the benefit of his sage advice in person.  Good bloke, that Roy.

So, with Roy out of the way I decided to try and think over the England tactics myself.  Like a general with his toy soldiers, arranging his miniature troops ahead of the actual battle, Giantmonk and I turned to Subbuteo:

Is that Subbuteo guy huge or am I smaller than you imagined?

Here I am picking the England keeper.  I know who he is, but I am not going to tell you who he is.  In fact I am not even going to tell him who he is.  We will find out only when I put my monkey paw into a hat and pull out a random name.  The first time I did it I pulled out ‘Robert Green’.  When I watched him play I didn’t think much of his goalie skills, but it turns out that he is just a hat-maker from Kettering and I had accidentally picked out the label.

I asked Giantmonk for his input, and I think that he has the best game tactics so far:

Eat my goal

Of all the jobs that I quite fancied doing when I was younger (before becoming an international Monkey of mystery, of course), pounding the mean streets as a police cop was not top of the list. Giantmonk quite fancied the idea, but that was more because of the promise of doughnuts.

The other day I heard from an old friend from Thailand, who had recently joined the local squad and who wanted to tell me what life was like when you’re a cop.

Chicks dig a guy in uniform

Firstly, it’s not all sitting around, eating. OK, it’s mostly sitting around eating, but sometimes we have to spring to action. I’m partnered with some young chap who does all of the driving. To be honest I don’t much trust him behind the wheel and I think that’s the real reason he wears the body armour.

'Don't keep pulling those faces at me, you blinkin' idiot'

Every now and again though we get called into some serious action. The picture below was taken during an illegal elephant football league bust, where I am taking control of the situation via the usual police tactic of shouting really loudly.

Freeze! Lay on your face with your hands behind your back!