Only in Birmingham could a statue of King Kong be lost twice. The city’s relationship with its cultural history is complicated
Why should the people of Birmingham have 100% arts cuts imposed on them? Brummies are quite capable of devaluing their own art without official encouragement. In 2020, the director Michael Cumming and I completed King Rocker (“One of my all time favourite rock docs” – Mark Kermode; “the new gold standard for rockumentaries” – the Scotsman), which interwove the tale of typically self-effacing Birmingham post-punks the Nightingales with that of a giant piece of neglected Birmingham public art. Nicholas Monro’s King Kong, an 18ft-high fibreglass ape, was a ferocious presence in a brutalist sunken square in Birmingham, subtly mirroring his namesake’s annoyance with the art deco architecture of 30s New York. In the King Kong movie, beauty killed the beast. But the giant ape I loved as a child was murdered by Birmingham. Twice.
Hated by 1970s regional-news-television talking-head Brummies and sold into nomadic slavery by the ignorant city fathers only months after it was unveiled in 1972, the stupendous ape was eventually rediscovered in 2016, and critically rehabilitated, by Leeds’s Henry Moore Institute. Like all great Birmingham geniuses, Kong had to go elsewhere to get recognised. But for many Brummies, Birmingham’s fear of getting above itself is one of the region’s most endearing traits. The alternative, of course, is being Manchester, the city equivalent of an endlessly farting dog that expects nauseated passersby to applaud.
King Rocker is newly available to stream. Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf opens in London in December before a national tour
