The secret of who really wrote the new autobiography of Tarzan's chimpanzee pal Cheeta is out.

The identity of the ghostwriter of Me Cheeta remained a secret - even when it was long-listed for The Guardian's award for first-time authors. Cheeta is still alive at 76 and publisher Fourth Estate insisted it had simply stumbled on the simian equivalent of a Jonathan Swift.

Martin Amis, Will Self and Gilbert Adair, the author of unauthorised sequels to Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, were all among the suspects. In the book, Cheeta describes Rex Harrison, his co-star in Dr Dolittle, as "that marvellous light comedian", but then calls him a "universally despised, impotent alcoholic" who tried to murder him by getting him to fall out of a tree.

If Marlene Dietrich was a good German, writes Cheeta, "then the bad ones must be absolutely f***ing terrifying".  The Sunday Times has finally revealed the author's true identity as James Lever, the Oxford-educated son of a High Court judge.

Mr Lever, 37, was commissioned to ghostwrite the book last year after Nick Pearson, 43, his publisher at Fourth Estate, read a newspaper report about a 75th birthday party for Cheeta. He wrote Me Cheeta in three months after reading more than 30 Hollywood memoirs written by stars of the 1930s and 1940s.

Mr Lever said: "We had wanted to keep the anonymity going until the book is published in America in February. We didn't want to spoil it for readers there, and we wanted people to say is it Will Self or whoever." Back in Palm Springs, Dan Westfall, Cheeta's guardian, said: "The book gets some things wrong. Cheeta is a happy chimp. I have lived with him for 17 years, having inherited him from my uncle, who used to train him for Hollywood movies, and I don't think he was ever as badly behaved or foul-mouthed as he appears in this book."

Probably still more entertaining than Russell Brand's effort.

Ghost writer? How dare you!

The original was here