He has more facial hair than Salman Rushdie, more caustic opinions than Martin Amis and more chance of lifting the 2009 Man Booker Prize than a host of famous writers.

He is also a chimpanzee.

Me Cheeta, The Autobiography is the stand-out title on the 13-strong longlist for the Man Booker announced yesterday.

Presented as a scurrillous Hollywood memoir, the book’s author was originally credited as “Cheeta”, an ape listed by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest non-human primate who was supposedly Jonny Weismuller’s co-star in umpteen Tarzan films and is now living in pampered retirement in Palm Springs.

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Today Chetta, once a renowned scene-stealer, lives in retirement on a ranch on the Los Angeles outskirts

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He confesses to a threesome with Marlene Dietrich, claims that the “universally despised, impotent, alcoholic” Rex Harrison tried to murder him and damns Maureen O’Sullivan, who played Jane opposite Weismuller as “a harmless old trout”.

Keen readers will have spotted a catch here though: only works of fiction qualify for the Man Booker. Me Cheeta is of course a satirical novel lovingly disguised as an authentic autobiography, complete with photographs and an index (both firsts for any book in contention for the prize).

Weeks of speculation in the literary world about the identity of the mystery “ghost writer” were settled in October when it was revealed to be not Amis or Will Self as some suspected but James Lever, the Oxford-educated son of a High Court judge who was a schoolboy in Bolton when Weismuller died in 1984.

James Naughtie, the broadcaster and author who chaired the judges said that it was “one of the strongest lists in recent memory, with two former winners, four past-shortlisted writers, three first-time novelists and a span of styles and themes that make this an outstandingly rich fictional mix.”

Ion Trewin, the literary director of the prize, called it a “great vintage” which continued the Booker’s journey from exclusively highbrow fiction to something more representative of what people actually wanted to read. Last year Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 became the first thriller to be nominated.

“Now I think Me Cheeta proves that it’s absolutely possible that any novel can get on (the list) if it’s done well enough. You don’t have to write what we used to call serious literary fiction to be considered for this prize.”

He added that the judges were so entranced by Me Cheeta that they spent some of their three-hour meeting yesterday taking turns to read out their favourite bits.

In whittling the field down from 132 books the judges discarded new novels from seven previous winners, including Margaret Atwood, Penelope Lively, Thomas Keneally, John Banville and last year’s winner Aravind Adiga. Books by Nick Hornby and David Peace also missed out.

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