As parents rack their brains to fill the long school holidays, what they might give for the diversions of a century or so ago when Mickey the smoking chimpanzee was the toast of Liverpool Zoological Gardens. Fifteen stone of muscle, Mickey also proved himself a useful footballer, controlling the ball and belting it at visitors. In an echo of the legend of Kong, Mickey climbed a chimneypot before he was felled by an army marksman. Mickey was lovingly stuffed and put on display at Lewis’s department store in the city centre until that was levelled in the Blitz. The flamboyant jazz groaner George Melly, who was born in Toxteth, wrote about Mickey in his memoir Scouse Mouse.