Digital Monkey

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Digital Monkey

The Digital Monkey (also called "Digital Monkey", "Monkeh" or "Munkay") is a knitted mascot used to promote PG Tips. He derives his name from the first set of advertisments which were run by the now defunct United Kingdom television package ITV Digital. Ironically, "Monkey" is in fact an ape and not a monkey.

1 ITV digital
2 Afterlife
3 PG Tips
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] ITV digital

A series of high profile adverts for ITV Digital featured the laid-back, droll and composed monkey (in a variety of t-shirts) playing the straight man to the comedian Johnny Vegas's slob character. Produced by The Jim Henson Company via their UK Creature Shop, puppeteered by Nigel Plaskitt and voiced by comedian Ben Miller, the monkey was one of the few positive public relations successes of ITV Digital. Purchasers of ITV Digital were sent a free copy of him.

The Digital monkeys are now on high demand and are quite valuable.

[edit] Afterlife

The monkey was in great demand after ITV Digital's bankruptcy, for a short time period selling for hundreds of pounds on eBay. He was however soon made available for general sale and saw a boost in popularity after an appearance in the second series of award-winning British sitcom The Office.

As the monkey was created and owned by advertising agency Mother rather than by ITV Digital itself, he was the subject of a legal dispute as both claimed the rights to the monkey. This was eventually solved by both parties agreeing to donate Monkey to Comic Relief. It has since been able to appear in a few other shows, with the BBC using it for 2001's Comic Relief, as well as making a guest appearance on ITV's coverage of the 2002 Brit Awards

[edit] PG Tips

In January 2007, Monkey and Vegas appeared in a new series of advertisments for PG Tips. PG launched these advertisments to replace their Chimp adverts which ended in 2002. The first advertisment was named "The Return" and currently 3 further adverts have been shown. PG have just launched a website selling the newly branded "PG Monkey" merchandise with profits being donated to Comic Relief who own the rights to Monkey. Also, from February 12th 2007, PG Tips are giving away free mini-Monkeys with every special packet of 160 bag PG Tips.