Apes of wrath

IT breaks my heart to think of my old chum living in such horrible conditions,” said New York-based Scottish actor Alan Cumming in a recent tweet. Was he referring to former writing partner Forbes Masson, of Victor and Barry fame, now facing a 12-fold increase in Tory MPs in his homeland? No. Masson long ago departed for the impregnable New Labour fortress of North London where Things Are Still More Or Less OK.

In fact, the chum Cumming had in mind was his co-star in 1997 film Buddy, a chimp named Tonka who's now living in a cage at the Missouri Primate Foundation, according to a new campaign from People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA). PETA want all the primates at the Foundation to be sent to sanctuaries to live out their lives and Cumming, who has previously backed other PETA initiatives, has written to the Foundation's owner to add his voice.

On the set of Buddy, Cumming and Tonka bonded to the extent that the chimp would groom the Scot, a process which in the animal kingdom means pulling insects, twigs and burrs out of the groomee's hair (and yes, that is a word). Cumming, who sports a winning Jacob Rees-Mogg style fringe in the film, was probably insect-free. Can't speak for the twigs and burrs, though. Still, the friendship was solid and, says Cumming, “one I'll always treasure”. He had hoped to see Tonka the following year at the film's premiere but was told “he was no longer manageable and had been 'retired' to Palm Springs”. Which is also what happened to Liberace, if memory serves.

A Perry dance

POP star Katy Perry, whose short marriage to fabulously unkempt comedian Russell Brand probably taught her a thing or two about pulling twigs out of matted hair, has released a new album and to promote it she undertook to live stream her life for 72 hours.

It's been on YouTube since Friday and it ends tomorrow, if you're interested. Can't say I am, particularly. From the little I've seen, it's pretty boring: if you thought hard-rocking pop stars slept three to a bed in a room littered with Platinum discs and empty bottles of Jim Beam, think again. All Perry seems to have is a couple of teddies. Still, I'd love to have seen if she danced a jig when she woke to find the Ukip vote had collapsed and SNP superstar Mhairi Black had held her seat.

Shooting with Putin

IF Vladimir Putin didn't exist, could you make him up? Of course you could. Human imagination is boundless. How else do you explain the continuing existence of River City?

But to play Putin in a movie you'd have to cross an ageing Steven Seagal with a mid-career Macaulay Culkin, and that's the sort of hybrid-from-hell we really don't want loose in anybody's head. Besides, I'm not sure Macaulay Culkin had a mid-career did he?

Let's stick with the game, though. We've made him up, the part is cast. Now, who's going to write the script? That's a tall order. Probably the best thing to do, if Russell T Davies isn't available, is to just pull off all the really bonkers stuff from Twitter and have him say it. And then let Oliver Stone direct.

Hang on, though. It turns out that film has already been made – and with the real Vladimir Putin.

Called The Putin Interviews, it airs in the US this week as a series of four, hour-long episodes, and is the result of two years of filming by Stone, who was granted relatively unhindered access to the Russian president and joined him in not-at-all-weird-or-disturbing activities such as weightlifting and watching Stanley Kubrick's satire on nuclear war film, Dr Strangelove. Even better, the script in Stone's film is by Putin himself. And so we get gems like “I don’t have bad days because I’m not a woman”, which breathtakingly crass utterance is followed by: “I am not trying to insult anyone. That's just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles.”

Does he mean like cradle to grave, boom to bust or The Sorcerer's Stone to The Half-Blood Prince? Or is he talking about something else, some other sort of natural cycle?

Hang on, there's more. Asked if he would be comfortable showering next to a gay man, he said he would not. “I prefer not to … Why provoke him? But you know, I’m a judo master.”

Pulp fiction

GUTTED that the election's over? Me too. Not because I'll miss seeing Laura Kuenssberg every time I turn on the box but because it means the only leaflets coming through the door now are from Pizza Hut or The Samaritans or people offering to mono-block my driveway for a very reasonable four-figure sum.

I've had hours of fun, you see, turning them into paper aeroplanes and papier maché voodoo dolls. Sure, the kids would get a little antsy if I snatched one away while they were trying to ink buck teeth and a moustache onto Ruth Davidson. But when I demonstrated the direct relationship between how well the Tory aeroplane flies and how the party's figures add up, the sprogs could appreciate the skilled political theorist they had in their midst. Then they could get back to cutting out the face and pasting it onto the body of the smiley guy that runs the Lib Dems. What's his name again?

I wasn't the only one finding more to do with the election leaflets than read them. There was an entire community out there applying their own “hacks” by manipulating election literature in ways that were silly, offensive, clever or (like mine) aeronautically challenged.

Ahead of last Thursday's vote, people were even photographing the results and posting them to social media. Cue countless shots of leaflets going down the toilet or into the cat's litter tray. One I saw just had Theresa May's face burnt out. Prophetic, no? It probably isn't illegal under EU law but might become so in post-Brexit Britain if the DUP have their way. Which is looking a lot more likely than this time last week.

Other leaflet botherers didn't even need a crème brulée blowtorch, just some basic origami skills – like the one who folded a leaflet from a Tory candidate in such a way that it showed his face and the last four letters of his surname. Just one more reason why I'll never stand for public office.

By the by, Matthew Hancock, the Honourable, er, Member concerned, did hold his seat in West Suffolk, wherever that is, so the online mockery had little effect on the outcome. Good fun, though: can't wait for the next election.