BRING BACK KONG!

10-10-2006

Peter Millington with a heartfelt plea about one of Birmingham's best-loved icons. Do we feel a campaign coming on?

34 years after his disappearance from the centre of Birmingham, few topics of conversation cause more controversy and disagreement amongst Brummies than the King Kong statue.

Long before Gormley's controversial and Brasso-free Iron Man or Mason's ill-fated marshmallow Forward sculpture… King Kong was the undisputed ruler of vulgar public art in Brum… and didn't we love him for it!

The seven-metre high reinforced-fibreglass statue of the Hollywood gorilla, designed by Nicholas Munro in 1972, stood in the Manzoni Gardens next to the city's Bull Ring Shopping Centre during the mid 1970s.

But what became of Brum's most memorable 70s icon?

Well during his brief repose in Birmingham city centre, the oversized primate attracted both admiration and criticism from his public, as well as unwanted attention from local pigeons.

How many people of my generation (the children of the mop-tops) remember those halcyon days, sitting in Manzoni Gardens eating our ‘Jamie-Oliver-free packed lunches' under the terrifying gaze of the fibreglass monkey from hell?

But the controversy was so great that after just six months the City Council lost the courage of their convictions as far as this unusual piece of public art was concerned and sold him to a local car dealer named Carl Racey.

To mark his proud new purchase, Mr Racey even decided to change the name of his used car dealership, previously known as The Camp (Regent) Garage because it stood near the Camp Hill flyover, to King Kong Motors.

However (according to a Japanese website which teaches the English language to far eastern students), the day after Mr Racey opened his business under the new name, he received a letter from the Business Names Section of the Department of Trade and Industry, telling him that he was not allowed to use the name King Kong as it gave the impression that he was patronised by the Royal Family and that the Queen and her relations were his customers!?!!

The website goes on to explain how Mr Racey, being very upset, told the DTI that he, in turn, would complain to the Queen.

He explained "There wasn't the slightest chance of confusion. I had the gorilla on the roof of the garage and he was dressed up as Santa Claus. There wasn't any way he could be mistaken for a member of the Royal Family."

Incidentally, the Japanese website used the article, presumably borrowed from a Birmingham newspaper of the time, to demonstrate the use of prepositions when writing English.

So next time you see a group of Japanese tourists wandering around Birmingham city centre as if they are looking for something, it might be worth trying:

“The Queen is in the car sales yard, she sees the monkey on the roof, the Santa Claus hat is on the monkey, the DTI man is in the doghouse”

…and see how they react

As for King Kong, he parted company with Mr Racey when the car dealer later sold him to Ingleston Market in Edinburgh where for many years he provided a visible meeting point for customers at the busy market, begging the question, “would you buy a second hand 20-foot fibre-glass monkey from this man?” and clearly in the case of Ingleston Market the reply was “yes”.

But just in case Birmingham City Council ever consider trying to buy King Kong back from Ingleston Market, perhaps to put on the side of one of our fantastic new sky scrapers, or even perhaps on top of the refurbished

Rotunda overlooking the Bullring shopping centre, then think again … one report on the internet states that apparently poor old King Kong has recently been ‘melted down' by his Scottish owners and is no more!

Although I'm not too sure whether fibre glass is ‘melted down', perhaps they used him to make canoes or something?

But either way, how could they do it?!! How could they destroy our Kong? Like Chad Valley slide projectors and Rolf Harris singing Two Little Boys he was part of my childhood!

I think it's high time we made amends with the legendary monkey man and bring him home to Brum