Why the 101st Monkey?

Good question. Wish I had a good answer.

A friend of mine has this bizarre theory – namely that if you think of something new, original, funny, etc. etc., and don’t act upon it immediately, sooner or later someone else will have the same idea and beat you to it. For example, if you create a funny joke but only tell your small circle of friends, then in about six months or so you’ll see some wannabe hack telling that very same joke on Last Comic Standing. Out of a group of one hundred monkeys, if one gets an idea and talks about it rather than acting on it, another monkey will come along sooner or later and claim the idea as his own.

This happens to me all the time. Seriously. When Babylon 5 was on the air my friends use to joke that J. Michael Straczynski (the series creator and head writer if you didn’t know, and if you didn’t then shame on you) probably had tiny microphones hidden all around my house and the local pub my friends and I frequented. Why? Well, because I could predict what was going to happen in the coming weeks or even seasons with frightening accuracy. And it wasn’t just TV either. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of ideas I’ve shared with friends for comic book characters only to see them realised by someone else within the space of a year.

So the name kinda fits.