Monkey lovers! Apologies for the long delay but I've found out who the stalker was...none other than the lovely Tracy Emin.

Lumley to rule Folkestone with loyal Gurkhas

A scene from the future? The Gurkhas, led by their queen Joanna Lumley, invade Folkestone as the townsfolk rebel against its incompetent councils with the help of Quake Island monkeys. (Monkeys and Ms Lumley out of shot).



Monkey lovers!

It's been a long time and sorry for long delay but we've been super busy building our first monkey love town called Monkey Love Town.

It's literally been all hands on deck. Oops... I was told not to mention anything about ships or nautical stuff for a while but as no one actually reads this (except for my flippn' stalker) let's just say the Russian cargo ship that went missing in the Channel had a lot more than planks of wood on board. I don't like to boast but WE ARE OFFICIALLY SHIT HOT RICH MONKEY PIRATES ...We are now unofficially the richest island in the world! Stick that in your Sunday Times rich list pipe, Mr Murdoch, and smoke it. Let's hope our collective spirit messes up your stupid list big time.

And we got three weeks free labour from the crew. They were very nice, well-behaved boys who were all builders before the economic downturn forced them to become crew to a ship carrying 'unusual' cargo. So yippee for us, they knew how to use a power drill and drive cranes and mix cement and all that stuff that you have to do to build a town without any infrastructure, which was pretty flippn' handy. And best of all they loved our island, especially our entertainment and unique interpretation of Oliver! The Musical. Anyway, suffice to say we were sad to see them go (especially the footballers who had started up their own football team, Quake Island FC. They are now back in the cage but that's another story.) If you want to read more about the cargo ship go to: www.where-the-hell-has-my-huge-cargo-ship-gone-shit-if-anyone-finds-what's-on-board-we're-in-BIG-trouble/shippingnews.com

Anyway, our town is looking 110 per cent good. But perhaps not as handsome as the bloke who played Heathcliff in that bad adaptation of Wuthering Heights last weekend. What was that all about? Me and Shmichael were well confused and I've read the book! That takes some doing. We allowed Jonathan to watch it as a special treat (Dr Ricardo banned him from the TV room as he used to get upset if people on the TV started arguing and after destroying five televisions, he had enough.) By the second half he'd completely lost the plot, saying how amazing it was that the characters had all managed to stay young looking and we had to 'get the special age-defying potion that they were guzzling'. It wasn't strictly true: Heathcliff in later life resembled that chef Marco Polo White in both looks and temperament. No wonder he could only get a dead woman interested in him. And what was all that hair stuck to Cathy's brother's face while he spent the whole second half lolling around on a table. I tell you I've been to Haworth and they certainly wouldn't allow that kind of behaviour. Flippn' waste of money! They would have been better of investing it in our fabulous town.

It's all designed on a typical Roman town with some of the best elements taken from Folkestone - our nearest neighbours. We left out the big white hotel that blocks out all the light and views by the Harbour as Schmichael says he doesn't want to attract 'those kind of tourists' on Quake Island. I never realised he was such a snob, to be honest, but he reckons they'd bring in all 'the bad tribute bands from the 60s and 70s' although none of us know exactly what he's talking about.

We went for another fact finding mission last weekend for the day and the town's going to allow yet another supermarket. I've never seen so many flippn' supermarkets...and then they complain that the town centre is dying. Me and Smichael just nodded our heads when we read the recent application. Monkeys could do better? We certainly flippn' could! The councils that run those towns should hang their heads in shame. And as for its MP...even your beloved Mrs T thought there was something dodgy about him.

Anyway, I've got myself all upset thinking about that town...perhaps we could come and free the people and get the lovely Ms Lumley to rule with her gurhka soldiers by her side. At the very least the town may get some decent public toilets.

Laters!

Monkey Friend.

Howdy monkey lovers!

You may have noticed the lack of news from Quake Island over the last few weeks but my friends, it's not because we have nothing to report. Gar from it. I hardly know where to start. Firstly, I need to put all our monkey fans out of their misery. We have most defintely not been invaded by deportee Iranians. Big releif at our end, I can tell you. (How that would have flippn' put an end to our blissful weeks in the sunshine on the light side's glorious white sandy beaches). And no, we have definately not been visited by any monkey baby snatchers. We're still busy, busy, busy with rehearsals for Oliver! I've flippn well been roped in big time by Sharleene anbd Schmicheal to play the Artful Dodger after X (young monkey) fell off the Helter Skelter and is in a bit of a bad way. We're giving him plenty of loving and Dr Ricardo's sleepy nighttime juice and Scmicahel reckons he read a story in the Daily Mail recently about a monkey in a robot suit with his hands tied behind his back. Apparently, he or she can control his movements through the power of thought. Joanthan;s busy building a replica so we may have x back with us before to long. But we've told him that he'll have to curb his trips on the big dipper when he's all robo-suited up.

Instead we've had the pleasure of a most incredible guest who turned up here last week with his human friend.

Could Iranians be deported to Quake Island?

Our beautiful island could be sunk along with our dreams to be Kent's Number One Tourist Attraction thanks to Iran’s flippin' supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.






Greetings monkey lovers

You will have probably noticed an absence of the usual fun-loving exclamation mark because my friends (or are you?), we are in the presence of an imposter. And there is no place for a casual, silly exclamation mark on Quake Island today. Indeed we may be in mortal danger.

Our blog is being followed by someone posing as none other than me, your trusted correspondent, Monkey Friend, calling themselves Monkey Friend. Well, if you really are a true monkey friend, Monkey Friend, then reveal yourself (though not like Dr Ricardo’s assistant, Orlando used to, please. Email will suffice.)

Theories as to who has stolen my identity are spreading like wildfire among the island community and for the sake of simplicity, Sharlene suggests I use bullet points to outline them. I’ve placed my comments about theories in italics
They include:

• It’s the secret service employed by France or England, or either both, trying to befriend me and get my trust before they invade. (Jonathan). I’m not so sure. We’ve not really heard much from either government since we ate their flags and I reckon they may be pretty busy on either sides of the island. Mr Brown’s got a load of trouble with banks, no cash and MPs diddling the public purse (though I’m convinced no-one has noticed three MPs out of the 600 plus missing) and now his open government has got to organise a secret inquiry into the invasion of Iraq. It’s all go, go, go Mr Brown. Anyway, he’s got all this shit going down while Mr Sarkosy has his 100 per cent good looking wife Carla to look after. I said to Jonathan that if some secret flippin’ service was so interested in us, they’d find a more effective way to infiltrate our monkey love island than through a couple of emails.

• Some weirdo looking for virtual monkey love who stumbled on our blog by mistake. (Nelson - he’s one of the older monkeys here and my new best friend after Jonathan chased me up the helter-skelter and threatened to throw me off until I agreed with his theory). I reckon this theory could be a goer. Dr Ricardo used to monitor our internet use because of all the flippin’ perverts in cyperspace. He said he didn’t want our special brains corrupted by the filth of human society. Very noble, Dr Ricardo, but what about the filthy needles you used to inject us with?

• A well wisher who means us no harm but is a bit bored at work or in the evening when there’s nothing on telly and thinks it’s entertaining emailing our community. (Sharlene) It’s a possibility but what kind of flippin’ freak spends their time writing dross to strangers?

• It’s someone who is jealous of my good looks and wants to get to me. (Schmichael) I’ll tell you this, ‘Monkey Lover’, after 20 years of Dr Ricardo’s daily brain injections, assuming my identity online will hardly ruffle my fur. You’re going to have to try flippn’ harder than sending two poxy emails.

• It’s the baby monkey snatchers. (Ramon). I’m not sure now that they’d be bothered to come all this way to snatch baby monkeys when they have breeders at home willing to sell them at three days old. But we’re not dissuading Ramon from this theory. The threat that some American monkey baby lover with a suitcase packed full of nappies and frilly dresses may arrive on the island one day is making him behave himself for now.

• Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei plans to dump all those who voted against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Quake Island. (Claudia). I flippin’ hope not. There’s 45 million voters and two thirds so obviously didn’t vote for Ahmadinejad which would leave us with 30 flippin’ million Iranians on our island. I tell you they will sink it. We’d have no space for our beautiful pleasure beach and harbour. Plus it’d ruin our chances of becoming Number One Tourist Attraction in Kent, UK. Claudia admits this is a bit far-fetched but as she rightly points out, who’d have ever thought a load of monkeys would end up rioting, capsizing and taking over a newly formed island? I said to Claudia: “No way! They’d just flippin’ shoot ‘em!” But as Claudia pointed out, killing 30 million people is quite a big undertaking even if you wheeled out all the dictators in the world and raised a few dead ones like Hitler and Pol Pot. It would actually be easier to just transport them to an island like ours. Shit.

• It’s the editor of Hello magazine, desperate to interview me about my favourite colour and shops, who will make no references to the numerous rape and assault allegations and the mysongist way I treat and talk about women. (Footballer 1). This bloke is a complete flippin’ narcissist and brainless scumbag. It’s a bad, bad thing to give so much cash to someone so young and stupid. Thankfully, we have done him one big favour by taking it away from him and making him and Footballer 2 clean the Pleasure Beach. They are a bit flippin’ slow but Sharlene insists on administering them with Dr Ricardo’s magic Sleepy Sleepy Tight Juice after another unpleasant incident in which Claudia was sexually assualted. (Somehow they managed to squeeze one of their footballs through the cage and got Claudia to fetch it and push it back. While she was doing so, Footballer 1 grabbed her arm and tried to get her to perform a sex act. Luckily, Jonathan heard the kerfuffle and came to her rescue and confiscated all their footballs and clothing.) Personally, I’d like film an alternative ending to the Italian Job where it falls over the edge of the cliff, with the two footballers inside. But the god-fearing Nelson says we cannot take another life and Schmichael says he’d miss our little games. I think we may have to think about casting them off in a lifeboat or something because they are getting on my flippin’ nerves big time.

So there you have it monkey lovers. Sleep well, because we won’t until we find out the true identity of Monkey Friend.

Could Iranians be deported to Quake Island?

Greetings monkey lovers

You will have probably noticed an absence of the usual fun-loving exclamation mark because my friends (or are you?), we are in the presence of an imposter. And there is no place for a casual, silly exclamation mark on Quake Island today. Indeed we may be in mortal danger.

Our blog is being followed by someone posing as none other than me, your trusted correspondent, Monkey Friend, calling themselves Monkey Friend. Well, if you really are a true monkey friend, Monkey Friend, then reveal yourself Monkey Friend (though not like Dr Ricardo’s assistant, Orlando used to, please. Email will suffice.)

Theories as to who has stolen my identity are spreading like wildfire among the island community and for the sake of simplicity, Sharlene suggests I use bullet points to outline them. I’ve placed my comments about theories in italics
They include:

• It’s the secret service employed by France or England, or either both, trying to befriend me and get my trust before they invade. (Jonathan). I’m not so sure. We’ve not really heard much from either government since we ate their flags and I reckon they may be pretty busy on either sides of the island. Mr Brown’s got a load of trouble with banks, no cash and MPs diddling the public purse (though I’m convinced no-one has noticed three MPs out of the 600 plus missing) and now his open government has got to organise a secret inquiry into the invasion of Iraq. It’s all go, go, go Mr Brown. Anyway, he’s got all this shit going down while Mr Sarkosy has his 100 per cent good looking wife Carla to look after. I said to Jonathan that if some secret flippin’ service was so interested in us, they’d find a more effective way to infiltrate our monkey love island than through a couple of emails.

• Some weirdo looking for virtual monkey love who stumbled on our blog by mistake. (Nelson - he’s one of the older monkeys here and my new best friend after Jonathan chased me up the helter-skelter and threatened to throw me off until I agreed with his theory). I reckon this theory could be a goer. Dr Ricardo used to monitor our internet use because of all the flippin’ perverts in cyperspace. He said he didn’t want our special brains corrupted by the filth of human society. Very noble, Dr Ricardo, but what about the filthy needles you used to inject us with?

• A well wisher who means us no harm but is a bit bored at work or in the evening when there’s nothing on telly and thinks it’s entertaining emailing our community. (Sharlene) It’s a possibility but what kind of flippin’ freak spends their time writing dross to strangers?

• It’s someone who is jealous of my good looks and wants to get to me. (Schmichael) I’ll tell you this, ‘Monkey Lover’, after 20 years of Dr Ricardo’s daily brain injections, assuming my identity online will hardly ruffle my fur. You’re going to have to try flippn’ harder than sending two poxy emails.

• It’s the baby monkey snatchers. (Ramon). I’m not sure now that they’d be bothered to come all this way to snatch baby monkeys when they have breeders at home willing to sell them at three days old. But we’re not dissuading Ramon from this theory. The threat that some American monkey baby lover with a suitcase packed full of nappies and frilly dresses may arrive on the island one day is making him behave himself for now.

• Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei plans to dump all those who voted against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Quake Island. (Claudia). I flippin’ hope not. There’s 45 million voters and two thirds so obviously didn’t vote for Ahmadinejad which would leave us with 30 flippin’ million Iranians on our island. I tell you they will sink it. We’d have no space for our beautiful pleasure beach and harbour. Plus it’d ruin our chances of becoming Number One Tourist Attraction in Kent, UK. Claudia admits this is a bit far-fetched but as she rightly points out, who’d have ever thought a load of monkeys would end up rioting, capsizing and taking over a newly formed island? I said to Claudia: “No way! They’d just flippin’ shoot ‘em!” But as Claudia pointed out, killing 30 million people is quite a big undertaking even if you wheeled out all the dictators in the world and raised a few dead ones like Hitler and Pol Pot. It would actually be easier to just transport them to an island like ours. Shit.

• It’s the editor of Hello magazine, desperate to interview me about my favourite colour and shops, who will make no references to the numerous rape and assault allegations and the mysongist way I treat and talk about women. (Footballer 1). This bloke is a complete flippin’ narcissist and brainless scumbag. It’s a bad, bad thing to give so much cash to someone so young and stupid. Thankfully, we have done him one big favour by taking it away from him and making him and Footballer 2 clean the Pleasure Beach. They are a bit flippin’ slow but Sharlene insists on administering them with Dr Ricardo’s magic Sleepy Sleepy Tight Juice after another unpleasant incident in which Claudia was sexually assualted. (Somehow they managed to squeeze one of their footballs through the cage and got Claudia to fetch it and push it back. While she was doing so, Footballer 1 grabbed her arm and tried to get her to perform a sex act. Luckily, Jonathan heard the kerfuffle and came to her rescue and confiscated all their footballs and clothing.) Personally, I’d like film an alternative ending to the Italian Job where it falls over the edge of the cliff, with the two footballers inside. But the god-fearing Nelson says we cannot take another life and Schmichael says he’d miss our little games. I think we may have to think about casting them off in a lifeboat or something because they are getting on my flippin’ nerves big time.

So there you have it monkey lovers. Sleep well, because we won’t be until we find out the true identity of Monkey Friend.

KEEP OUT monkey baby lovers

Greetings monkey lovers! (Though not to any of the freaks that appeared in Channel's My Monkey Baby last night. If you're reading this - you are insane. KEEP AWAY from us with your disgusting frilly dresses and Silly Willy monkey names. Yes, that's the name of the poor bastard with the bridesmaid dress on.)

Flippin' heck! Me, Sharlene and Schmichael sat through the hour long documentary with our mouths hanging open.

We agreed it was the most bizarre documentary we'd ever seen and I tell you for nothing, me, Sharlene and my comrades have seen hundreds. Dr Ricardo was a big fan of your Channel 5 and real life drama stuff. So we know all about proper freaks and wierdos, and Peter and Katie (I love them. I'm very sad they've split but she is quite nasty to him.)

If you didn't see it, fictional reader, then let me summarise. Two barking mad couples, one singleton. None of them wanted children. All had various traumas as to why not, including not talking to your six children, a hysterectomy and a mean father. They all adopted baby monkeys, and in varying degrees fed them ice cream and cakes, kept them in nappies, transported them in prams, plastered them in make up and dressed them in ridiculous outfits. One called Laurie even claimed that her little princess, Jessie, didn't like bananas. All monkeys like flippn' bananas. Unbelievable.

Making monkeys dress up like you humans isn't right. We know that because Dr Ricardo caught his assistant Orlando red-handed. He'd unexpectantly returned early from one of his cycling holidays because his room had been double-booked with some pensioners from Recife. Anyway, Orlando had got me to squeeze into a rubber suit and mask, telling it was a ground breaking experiment see how well our monkey bodies could tolerate heat. 'We lived in the flippn' Amazon, Mr Orlando!;' I told him. 'How much hotter can you get than that! Flippn' hell?' although it came out more like: 'Mmmmm eeeek...mmmmm' cause the mask was so flippn' tight. To make it worse he handed me a long whip and told me to pretend to be Indiana Jones. 'Pretend I'm an evil Nazi and I've stolen your monkey treasure!' I couldn't see a flippn' thing and with all my flailing around, I knocked over the bunsen burners and the huge vials of chemicals bubbling away, destroying most of the lab and setting the alarm off. We never saw Orlando again and no mention has ever been made of the monkey heat experiments.

Anyway, in between rehearsals of Oliver!, Sharlene and Schmichael have been busy printing posters of all who took part, just in case they get any funny ideas about Quake Island and try and steal any of our monkey babies. WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE.

Scmichael reminded us that some 15,000 nutters in the US adopt baby monkeys so he's instigated a new law from now on: every visitor is searched for nappies with holes cut in them for tails and/or nappies with a pair of scissors and hideous frilly dresses. That way, he reckons, we'll be able to spot a potential monkeynapper and escort them off the island immediatedly.

Sharlene reckons that's too good for them, that we should lock them up with the footballers, who are getting a bit upset with their confinement. I opened up their cages after giving them a big dose of Dr Ricardo's Sleepy Night Night Juice and threw in three footballs for them to play with. Sharlene has now confiscated the balls after being on the receiving end of some rather sexist comments. She'd been doing a dress rehearsal for Oliver! at the time and was all done up like Nancy when they started on her. I don't blame her. I also put a Tory MP in with them as punishment. He can bore them now with his protests of 'the people being jealous of my duck island/house/mansion/fast car/foreign holidays/'. We've got a couple of his mates here, whingeing on about 'the rules let us do it'. I don't know what they're going on about. But I wish they'd just shut up. I am fed up with it, I tell you. They're going to find themselves in with the footballers if they don't shut it.

Laters monkey friends!

Lessons in running a seaside town

Want to jazz up your neglected seaside town? Try Folkestone, Kent, UK, and get them to give you some of their fantastic seaside attractions for nothing like we did. We got a historic water lift, a nice big harbour railway bridge and station complete with platforms, and loads of funfair rides for a fiver. Oh, and the bloke who makes the barrier go up and down in the car park. All we need is a bit of monkey magic and our island will be the Number One Attraction in Kent, UK. Watch this space.





Greetings monkey lovers!

We’ve just returned from a very interesting, albeit faintly disturbing, fact finding mission to Folkestone, Kent, UK.

We were invited across after some Folkestone local dignitaries contacted Sharlene on Facebook about running boat trips to the island and in turn we thought it’d be a great opportunity to get some top tips about running a successful seaside town.

We'll be happy to comply but will have to move our celebrity visitors and cash onto the dark side of the island when the boats full of tourists arrive. Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge when it comes – especially as we now have our own historic railway bridge to cross our own harbour. But more of that later!

Along with the railway bridge, we came back with a fantastic Victorian lift operated by water that the town council no longer wanted. It’s fabulous and one of just two working models in the world. Schmichael suggested we use it on the light side mountain running down to our fabulous white sandy beach. I think we could be onto a winner.

Sharlene quizzed them about the lift but they were adamant that they didn’t want to pay £300,000 on the upkeep of it, when there were more important things to spend taxpayers money on.

‘And what can be more important than a unique water lift that is a tourist attraction in its own right, let alone one that allows old people and people with disabilities to get from the top of a very high cliff to the seafront, in a town that’s supposed to be undergoing regeneration and that will soon have a fast link to London?’

They all went a bit quiet but one of them piped up something about the price of yellow paint rocketing in recent months and money being lost in a high interest savings account in Iceland.

After taking a leisurely stroll along the Leas, looking out at the beautiful sight of Quake Island in the distance, we took the lift down to the seafront. All of us were pretty excited about getting there because we’d seen the signs to the Pleasure Beach and Ramon had read about the fairground rides.

‘WHAT IS THAT?’ I said. (Reader, I had been pretty quiet before this outburst but before us lay what can only be described as a massive concrete floor littered with glass and dog shit and few desperate weeds leading onto the beach.)

‘Who’s stolen the fairground? Where’s the flippin’ rollercoaster and paddling pool?’ shouted Ramon, who had been going on and on about a special funfair treat all the way here, driving us all flippin’ mad.

The local dignitaries grew rather quiet again.

‘It’s a long story...’ one of them mumbled.

‘It’s being redeveloped...er...one day,’ said another.

‘Into airstrip!’ said Ramon excitedly. ‘You going get aliens and planes and helicopters and flying machines to land there. Where are they?’ Ramon screamed, searching the sky manically.

Sharlene had to handcuff Ramon after he bit a lady dignitary on her arm. Once Dr Ricardo's sleepy sleepy juice kicked in and the lady dignitary stopped bleeding, they explained that they got rid of the fairground two years ago and are still waiting for the redevelopment but guess what? We’ve bought the whole funfair for a fiver, so at least Ramon can play to his heart’s content once we get it set up on the island.

Anyway, we continued with our tour, growing a bit sadder with each step of glass crushing underneath our callused feet, along the concrete promenade towards the harbour (as Sharlene is most interested in recreating a traditional fishing village on the light side of the island.)

Suddenly a huge white building that vaguely resembled a ship suddenly cast its dark shadow over us. The massive monstrosity had blocked any view we may have had of the harbour from the beach, or indeed from any area west of the town. Me, Sharlene and Ramon reasoned it must be pretty hideous if they allowed a building like this to be built.

Imagine our surprise then when we rounded the corner and finally saw behind the white beast of a building – a charming old-fashioned harbour with colourful fishing boats bobbing in the beautiful turquoise water and the white cliffs of Dover hazily floating in the background. It even had its own station complete with harbour bridge.

However, our joy was taken away quickly as a sudden chill came over us though – the building which we understand to be a hotel, had now blocked out any sunlight and we were suddenly stumbling along the road in the semi-darkness.

Me, Sharlene and Ramon were pretty freaked out by this point, and couldn’t wait to return to the unspoilt beauty of Quake Island. Seems like we got a few bargains though including the railway bridge, tracks and station buildings. We even got the man who makes the car park barrier go up and down thrown in for nothing though he wasn't too pleased about it.

We have much work to do monkey lovers - lucky we have so much money and cheap labour!

PS: You may be interested in the story below I found in Shipping Today.

Rich fleeing tax hike feared drowned
Mystery surrounds the identifes of up to a dozen people feared drowned in the Channel last week.
The remains of a luxury yacht, registered in Jersey, were washed up in Ramsgate, Kent, last week, after gale force 10 winds were reported in the middle of the channel, near Quake Island.
John Henry, Dover Coastguard, said: “We had a signal that someone was in trouble but we couldn’t get to them in time. The boat capsized and we assume that all its occupants are drowned.
‘We have no idea who was on board the yacht. It seems the owner has taken a lot of trouble to hide his or her identity by registering its ownership under a fictional company based in Switzerland.
Detective Inspector Robert Nash refused to be drawn into recent speculation about the identiies of those on board, thought to be celebrities and rich businessmen fleeing the UK after recent tax rises.
‘Until people come forward to tell us their loved ones are missing, their identities will remain a mystery.’
www.shippingtoday/richbastardsfleeuktaxhike/newsstory/may2009

Fishing for celebs

Squealer, Dr Ricardo's favourite monkey, presumed drowned. He used to ride on Dr Ricardo's big hands in the evening when they were free from giving us special medicines. He was quite nice though he could be a bit of a snitch on occasions.
(Sharlene has just read this and wants me to point out, for identification purposes if his body washes up, that he's wearing a fawn-coloured fake fur short-sleeved jacket in this photo and that's not his tail. It belonged to Mr Fluffy Chops, Dr Ricardo's cat. He just got in the way as I took the photo. Also, that black thing around his head is a headscarf that Dr Ricardo tied around our heads when we had really bad headaches.)







Greetings monkey fans!

I bring you exciting celebrity news from Quake Island.

We have our first visitors! And not just any old run of the mill cross-channel vomit overboard the ferry visitors (more of them later) but bonafide celebrities. You’re probably thinking, ‘what do a bunch of monkeys know about celebs?’. Good question, indeed. But, you see, Dr Ricardo used to bring in his old copies of Ola! magazine and occasionally when he disappeared for weeks on end for his cycling holidays, he brought back the US and UK versions. So, my friends, we know all about your beautiful celebs and their home furnishings. And now we have our own!

My favourite is Shmichael Shmaine. He’s fun-loving like me too and thinks I’m 110 per cent better looking in real life. I know all his films and we had such fun restaging my personal fave, The Italian Job using Dr Ricardo’s battered old Volkswagen beetle which got washed up on the shore this week. We pushed it up the steepest rock here and we eventually got Shmichael in the back. He wasn’t keen. But between me and you I think he was just being modest. It was such fun! We’ve kept it up there, just so we can do reinactments whenever the fancy takes us.


We have a couple of footballers with big fat hairy thighs and not much else. Mind you their bags stuffed with loads of £50 notes will come in handy, big time. So thanks fellas, even if you didn’t seem that pleased that we fished them out. But they don’t talk that much after we shut them up with some of Dr Ricardo’s sleepy sleepy magic juice.

We picked up some old fat bloke from the other side of the island. Naughty Mr was trying to bury his suitcase stuffed full of notes in a cave. We caught him red handed. Jonathan managed to corner him in the cave and knock his glasses off, so he was a bit confused.

He kept shouting: ‘This isn’t Jersey! Where am I? Am I in Hell?’

‘No, Mr! You are on our special monkey love island. We are just off the coast of Folkestone, England, UK!’

He then sank to his knees and started sobbing. Sharlene managed to shut him up eventually with, you guessed it, Dr Ricardo’s special sleepy sleepy juice.

Finally, we’ve got this eyebrow bloke who is pretty grumpy to be honest. He has a very bad attitude considering we are his monkey hosts. Sharlene recognised him from the pages of Ola! and apparently he’s something big in musical theatre. A big fat eyebrow, if you ask me. She kept singing ‘Consider yourself at home!’ from that Charles Dickens musical extravaganza Oliver! when we fished him out of the sea. He seemed quite pleased that we rescued him but told her to shut the f*** up after he’d got his breath back. Mr Touchy, he better be careful. We have big musical loving monkeys here and now he’s feeling better, they’ve been trying to persuade him to put on a production of Oliver!. Sharlene wants to play Nancy of course. Shmichael Shmaine says he’d love to play Bill Sykes as he missed out on the part to Oliver which I don’t really understand if Oliver was playing Oliver. Flipping heck! All this confusion over a West End musical. I didn’t realise they were so complicated.

Oh and by the way, we are extremely rich now. We're up to £30 million and still counting.

Laters, monkey lovers!

The beginning

This is me. I'm 110 per cent better looking in real life. I was actually suffering a really bad headache when Dr Ricardo took the photo. He was trying to get me to say 'cheese'. I don't like cheese.


Greetings monkey friends!

It's been pointed out by some of my comrades that readers won't realise how we arrived at Quake Island. In turn, I pointed out that we don't actually have any monkey-loving readers so it's pretty futile. But as I have been voted island correspondent, I will do my best to relay facts to my imaginary readers. (Happy now Sharlene? Let's have no more complaining. If you can do better, go ahead. I didn't want to do this anyway.)

It's been two months since we arrived on the island. It's amazing none of us drowned as we swam ashore. Our fur is pretty thick and it was dragging us down big time. Some of the monkeys say it was Dr Ricardo's special medicine that helped us, though I have my doubts. I'm not so sure about Dr Ricardo anymore. He told us we were coming to Dover, England, UK, for a special holiday in a brand new hotel, all mod cons. No more shitty Brasilian living arrangements. That we deserved a big all expenses holiday for all those injections and headaches we suffer. Dr Ricardo said he was our tour guide. Shipping Today says otherwise. The last I saw of him was pitifully clinging to the side of the ship as it floundered. Shame he didn't take his own special medicine or use his big, fat hands to paddle to land.


Anyway, here's the Shipping Today story.

Capsized cargo ship full of monkeys colonise island


A cargo ship bound for a university research lab carrying two hundred monkeys floundered in the Channel last night.


Coastguards reported seeing the ship, registered in Venezuela, rocking dangerously from side to side.


As they got closer, they were stunned to see that hundreds of monkeys had escaped from their cages and were running riot on the ship.


Captain Black, said: “The monkeys were just going crazy, they were ripping stuff up and destroying the ship. The crew looked absolutely terrified. The monkeys managed to force a couple of them into the cages and threw bananas at them. They then threw the other members overboard.


“We picked them up straight away and the monkeys began hurling lifeboats at us. It was terrifying. The crew are in a bad way. They don’t speak English so we don’t really know what happened."


Captain Black said that the monkeys managed to swim to the newly created island in the Channel, Quake Island.

Folkestone District Councillor, Ben Hardy, said: "Talk about coincidences. We were in discussion with Boulogne Council about creating an island of monkeys there to bring in more tourists to the area since we lost the ferry and got that tunnel. It's going to save us a small fortune. Let's hope the monkeys like visitors."

The exact destination of the cargo ship of monkeys is shrouded in mystery. Crew members said that a silent scientist with large hands and a strange accent had been travelling with the monkeys but had gone overboard. He is feared drowned.

Speculation is growing that the monkeys were on their way to a brand new laboratory just outside London.

However, Cuntingdon Life Sciences who run the lab, were remaining tight-lipped about the ship load of monkeys as we went to press last night.


www.shippingtoday/capsizedcargoshipfullofmonkeyscoloniseisland

Welcome to Quake Island

A photo of a barbary ape. We look a little like them but are better looking and have bigger brains thanks to Dr Ricardo, who gave us special medicine every day.

Greetings monkey lovers from sunny Quake Island, the world's newest island.

For those who haven't heard of Quake Island please see the news story published in Shipping Today this year. They were the only newspaper to have picked up on the fact that a new island has been created in the English/French Channel.

We've decided to set up our own website to give visitors more information about our special community without the interference of British and French governments.

France and Britain are still quarelling about who owns the island as it's slap bang in the middle of the Channel. They planted their flags. We cut them up and ate them. We await their return with interest.

Quake’s ‘secret’ island creates diplomatic storm
An island created by Folkestone’s recent earthquakes has caused a diplomatic storm between UK and France.
The four mile by ten mile ‘secret’ island was created during the 2007 earthquake in the Dover Straits and erupted to the surface during the earthquake in March this year.
The UK and French governments had tried to keep the island secret by cordoning off a ten mile exclusion area around the island with giant sea-coloured screens with ‘keep away’ written on them in different languages.
Coastguards, fishermen and ferry operators on both sides of the channel, the busiest shipping lane in the world, were told that the area was out of bounds because it was the scene of a valuable sunken Roman vessel.
But last week a Folkestone fisherman’s vessel lost power near the no-go zone and found himself floating towards the island.
Frank Rogers, a fisherman for twenty years, said: “I managed to catch a glimpse under a damaged screen. It looked like a bunch of giant rocks sticking out of the sea but it’s pretty weird to see it after all these years of being just sea.
“I’d heard rumours about what was behind the screens but I never imagined anything like this. It’s mad. As soon as I came up close, the French navy pulled alongside in a speedboat and arrested me.”
Mr Rogers, 35, was held overnight in Calais and released the next day after signing a secrecy clause.
But he decided to speak out after news leaked that France and the UK are now both laying claim to the quake island after initially agreeing to share it, hoping it may have valuable resources.
Cllr Ronald Bloom, of Folkestone District Council, said the council were fully aware of the island’s existence back in 2007 when it rose two metres out of the ground, causing a Chinese registered freighter to flounder.
Its cargo of wood washed up along the Kent coastline days after. At the time officials blamed a storm for the spill.
He said: “It’s slap bang in the middle of the Channel so we had planned to share the island. We’ve been in talks with Boulogne councillors and had drawn up plans to create Monkey Island because everyone loves monkeys.
“Both Folkestone and Boulogne are desperate for tourists since the ferry link disappeared, and Folkestone lost the Rotunda, and soon the Leas Cliff Lift.
“Monkey Island would bring in bucket loads of tourists into both towns. We’d even been in consultation with the world’s leading monkeyologists to find out how we can rebuild monkey habitats on the island .It’ll be a sad day for the people of Folkestone if we can’t resolve it.”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown this morning accused French president Nicolas Sarkosy of going back on his word to share the island after boasting on live TV about the ‘French’ find.
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he said: “We will be measuring the length from each side of the island to see who is nearest. We understand that it is two feet nearer to UK soil.”
The 2007earthquake measured 4.2 on the Richter scale while the most recent measured 2.8. Previous earthquakes in 1382 and 1580 were two of the largest earthquakes to have affected Britain, both measuring 6.
Prof Janet Popkiss, senior seismologist, of the British Geographical Society, said she was extremely excited about the island’s appearance.
“There are probably lots of mini-islands along the Dover Straits fault line but none have ever come up this far. Who knows, maybe in a few hundred years, we may have dozens of island erupting through the waves all the way to France.”

www.shippingtoday/shhhh...newchannelislandsecret/2009