Long read
James Lever’s incredible, moving and hilarious story of Cheeta the Chimp, simian star of the silver screen in the golden years of Hollywood.
The truth behind the tale of a monkey stolen from deepest Africa and forced to make a living among the fake jungles and faker stars of Tinseltown. Me Cheeta covers his struggle with drink and addiction to cigars, his breakthrough with a radical new form of abstract painting, his fondness for hamburgers and his battle in later life with diabetes. Funny, moving - and so searingly honest you know it has to be fiction - this is the greatest celebrity non-memoir of recent times.
James Lever
About the Author
When Me Cheeta was longlisted for the prize, James Lever was assumed in some quarters to be a pseudonym; two of the names most frequently bandied about were Martin Amis and Wilf Self.Features