Monkey's "MY KINDA PEOPLE" Archive - the golden oldies

Derek the Original

If you think that I pop up randomly in strange places from time to time - you need to meet Derek!

Derek's prophetic agendy leads him all over the shop, in fact I once met him in a cornish pasty shop. We ended up getting a large pasty each (a little too large actually - I only just made it home) then he disappeared. A few weeks later 'POP!' he turned up again, this time to help get the new-look tg site (the one you know, love and are reading right now) live - I managed to get him round for dinner afterwards but then he disappeared again suddenly. Be warned, he may appear in your living room any time soon! Make sure you avoid injury by giving him a big hug (you might get away with a mere pinch).

IF YOU SEE THIS MAN - LET ME KNOW
HE OWES ME 5 BUCKS! (not really)

El J'hàiró

My good buddy El J'hàiró (formerly known as Jamoir) and I have had many adventures together travelling from cactus to sombrero in Mexico. We used to practise gun fighting at noon together (until the unfortunate accident) and even resorted to busking the hot and dusty streets with our guitar and drums (after the unfortunate accident).

These happy days continued until one day when a large black car pulled up, the window wound down and a big man in a white suit said, "El J'hàiró, we've been watching you for some time now and your talent preceeds you. Please sign this contract for a five album deal with a 90% return and work for us as a model in your spare time.

El J'hàiró didn't even turn to say good bye to me as he left that day to seek fortune and glory - he didn't even sent me a postcard! I mourned on that dusty street for many years before picking my self up, coming over to England and working for TG where I bumped into El J'hàiró again. I forgave him for leaving me and now we busk the cold wet streets of Sheffield - HOORAY!!!

Squiff the 3rd

Squiff is very polite when he's asleep. There are no words to describe him when he's awake.

I'll elaborate; there was this one time when I was a lad and I was working at the local bakery in the village. I'd just finished preparing the dough when it started rising rather fast. It suddenly adopted the shape of a penguin and started to talk to me,"excuse me, do you have the time?". To which I replied, "erm... no sorry, I left my watch at home this morning". This seemed to rile him and he started singing 'I'll take the high road and you'll take the low road' so I sneaked out of the side door and got knocked over by a cyclist called Kevin.

I spent the next month in hospital with a squashed tail but recovered in due time.

Neilll Birchenalllll

Maaaaan - I love this guy!

Right now he's on a plane over the Atlantic with his brand new spanking visa to spend a year over here helping us out at TG. The thing is - we need him for lots of important resourcing things and he's good... but no way as good as ME!

I'll tell you why too:

• I'm THAT good cos people throw rose petals at my feet as I walk along - and I don't even have feet!!!

• I'm THAT good cos there's a queue of people 6 miles long outside the door right now all waiting just to get a glimpse of my cute ears.

• I'm THAT good cos whenever I brush my teeth, the spit is collected and auctioned off for millions of dollars.

• I'm just THAT good so there.

Rachel Small

Rach is a good person. That's nice isn't it. She's goodhearted and kind and means well.

I first met her when I was having a bad day. What happened was that I'd been busking with my monkey-drum all morning and hadn't made a penny, this had put me in a foul mood so when I ran my tap dancing class later in the afternoon I gave them all a hard time and a few of them left because they "didn't think that standing on their heads was constructive" - as if!

Anyway, in my wandering desperation, I ended up at... er, what was I talking about again? Oooh! Look at the photo - there seems to be something on my nose. I assure you there wasn't.

Andy Forests

Andy has a healthy disrespect for me. That's not true - you should see him, it is not possible for the word "healthy" to be associated with him at all.

Then again I like him lots and there's a story behind it...

It was a nice sunny day and the birds were singing. I was strolling down the road when I ran into uncle Bob. He'd been up all night writing his novel about a tuna fish who was on the edge. We ended up talking about it and I ended up helping him with the ending. This was when we went into the local cafe for coffee and bananas - it turned out to be a lovely chilled out afternoon. That weekend, we went and watched the footie with a few mates and the score was 5-3. It was cool!

Ant "Ant" Clifford

My best pal Ant... hmmm...

Well would you like being carried around in his pocket all day? Still we've had some good times and I'll tell you about one of them:

I was on holiday in Australia to get some introvert time. It was great - I went scuba diving in the coral reef, went to see a musical at the royal opera house, went to Ayers rock and played the didgeridoo with some of the locals.

It was when I was back-packing through the bush that it happened. I came face to face with a huge spider. All it's beady little eyes had me fixed and I could hardly breathe. It suddenly pounced at me and everything around me was a blur until I realised that actually I'm made of fabric and it couldn't hurt me even if it wanted to. I spoke up and said, "gooday, spid! I'm a puppet" and she said, "oh I'm terrible sorry! I only wanted your banana anyway - I'm a vegan". So we chatted a bit more and shared the banana (which was very nice) and spent the afternoon together. We took a cruise on a glass-bottomed boat and saw lots of interesting fish.