"Goddamn!", shrieks top space scientist Neogeo Yaw. "Another piece of Ham the Chimpanzee's Space Diary just fell to Earth! On top of my new girlfriend's head! Killing her! I was just about to kiss her! Her lips were all pouty! Oooh, that monkey!"

Ham the Chimpanzee's Space Diary - part 2

Hello, Ham here! Still in Space!

Mission Control, the big jabberjaws, are at it again. "Are you ready for your re-entry figures, Mercury 1? Yadda yadda yadda. Is the computer primed to receive data? Nyah nyah nyah." It's a miracle I can stay awake! Why do they even have mouths? It's not like they say anything good.

I wonder if I'm going to meet Jackie Kennedy when I get back? She dresses very well, but I've got a feeling that she could be quite dirty, in a good way. "What's that Mercury 1? Jackie Kennedy?" Ooops! There I go, speaking when I was meant to be thinking silent thoughts!

"Erm, negative Capcom. Give us those re-entry figures, why don't you?"

"Okay Ham, hang on..." I can hear giggling! "The figures are... that you love Jackie Kennedy 82 percent!"

"What's that? I don't! That's not true!"

"Ham, biosensors indicate that you've gone bright red."

"No I haven't, I'm fine! Stupid sensors. What are the figures, Capcom?"

"Hold on for that, Ham. Okay. Confirmed. You love Jackie Kennedy 82%!" I said this would happen if NASA went and employed girls.

* * *

Next time I look out my window who should I see but my ARCH NEMESIS Gary Gorbachev. He's about ten feet away, in one of those squalid Vostok capsules. He's got his spacetrousers round his ankles and he's presenting what would be his oestral swelling if he was a girl, right at me through his window, and our capsules are so close I can hear him shouting across the vacuum "You have just the one girlfriend, like an Orang-utan, American stooge!".

"You are Monkey Tragic!" I shout back.

"Astrofool!" still waving his ass at me.

"Cosmotwat!"

And with that, I hit my jet pedal, there's a spray of space-dust, the squeal of metal against vacuum, and I shoot right past him. I sing another of my songs at stupid Gary as he helplessly shakes his fist at me: "The Red spacecraft and Ham had a race,all Red wants to do is stuff his face! He eats everything he sees, from trucks to prickly trees, but smart old Ham, he took the Milky Way!" There are no prickly trees in space of course, but you see what I did? 'Red' as in 'Red Menace'? 'Milky Way' like in 'Space'? Ha Ha! If my space career ever falters, I really think I could be onto something with this song business! Don't you?

"What are you looking at, you fucking planetbound moron?"

* * *

Wah! An orbit later and my Mercury Capsule hits a space-banana! THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A SPACE-BANANA, so I can only assume is was just a banana, deliberately left in my path by Gary. I slip ass-over-tit right out of my proper flight pattern.

Sure enough, Gary's voice crackles over my intercom. "Ha! You see Ham, now it is my turn for singing! Oh, what an atmosphere, I love a party with a happy atmosphere, so let me take you there, and you and I will be dancing in the cooool night air!" He's not so good a singer as me, but I doubt Russ Abbot's words have ever sounded so chilling.

For sure enough, I'm plunging into the atmosphere, and with my heat-shield all the wrong way up! And I've used up all my jets on that silly race with Gary!

"Capcom 1, Capcom 1! Emergency!" I shout, grinning like an idiot with my stupid topsy-turvy chimp face.

Finally I get hold of Mission Control through the radio static, but the news is not good. "Eighty-two per-cent! Eighty-two per-cent! You love Jac-kie eighty-two per-cent!"

I'm starting to think being spacechimp isn't all it's cracked up to be.

"Frankly, I hope he burns to a crisp."