I Am Not an Animal

Has there ever been a more contented bunch of animals? A stylish waterside apartment, excellent cuisine, a cellar full of Chianti and a subscription to celebrity magazine UH! are just a few of the perks of this pampered menagerie. Rumour has it that one lucky creature has been selected by their creator, Simmonds, to go through the door marked 'London' in the corner of the lounge. They believe this will mean a glittering life of star-studded premières and chic society dinner parties.. However, the truth isn't so glamorous.

When the animals are nearly blown to pieces while searching for the West End on an army firing range, a power struggle emerges between natural (if stupid) leader Philip the Horse and aggressive little Mark, with his heady talk of music industry excess: "There’ll be go-go dancers ... and stew!" As an emotional split ensues, the intrepid heroes also have to endure terrifying encounters with wild animals and a less than friendly response from the two-legged inhabitants of this weird "planet of the men and women". Thank goodness that Janet, an old lady with a limited grip on reality, looks kindly on the bunch of traumatised animals that knock on her door, asking for Pringles. But the men back at Project S are out looking for the furry fugitives…

The wild is a cruel, dangerous environment for any animal, especially without hard cash for mobile phone credits and lip gloss. Being a fugitive doesn't pay well, Mark the bird's music career hasn't taken flight yet and the money found hidden in a shoebox in Greenbank cottage is running low. Pride prevents Philip the horse from claiming disability benefit on account of the difficulty he has getting up the stairs, so when Hugh the monkey blows their last £400 on a broken laptop, the animals are forced to embark on a series of desperate moneymaking schemes. Claire the rat dabbles in 'XXX Hot Phone Chat', Philip applies to be an Air Traffic Controller (on condition that he can work from home); Hugh shows up at the local mini mart in a balaclava, offering to kill shoplifters with his baseball bat. But even Mark's more direct approach of trying to trap cows and burn them alive fails miserably. Niall the rabbit strikes gold when he fixes the laptop, Hugh finds some old telephones in the attic - and thus is born the furriest IT support call centre in the world.

It's spring, and lust is in the air at Greenbank Cottage: Hugh the monkey's completely fallen for Claire the rat, who's too busy getting down and literally dirty with her 'boyfriends' - a nest of diseased rodents living in the growing mountain of rubbish in the garden. Winona's doggy biological clock is close to midnight, but a pile of self-help books simply panic her more. Hopes are rapidly fading of ever meeting her one true love, the actor Tim Robbins, so Winona's eye roves elsewhere - landing on Philip the horse.

Mark the bird (stage name Glen Belt), is in his expensive new cellar studio, struggling to write the perfect hit single. But his lyrics are more awful than ever and he can't think of a chorus. His self-run fan website (featuring a carefully shot photo of just his eyes) has received no visitors from the '90 billion' Claire assures him are out there deliberately ignoring him. But Keiko, a 14 year old musical prodigy in Tokyo, stumbles on the site, falls in love with 'Glen with the lovely eyes' and sends him a chorus. Mark, his pride wounded, tells Keiko to get lost, takes the chorus anyway, posts it on the site and sinks into a deep clinical depression. When he surfaces from bed a week later to find the song is a massive hit, he's not entirely prepared for the fame he's always craved. How to explain to an adoring public that the mysterious Glen Belt is a small fat talking bird - and plagiarist - called Mark Andrews?

Face it: life away from Vivi-Sec UK just hasn't worked out. Winona's attempt to join the Women’s Institute goes badly wrong; Claire's out of clean thongs; Philip the horse, trying to mount a stepladder and clear out the loft on a weekend 'like other men', just causes more devastation to a house never designed with 'people' shaped like this lot in mind. Okay, their creators back at the lab may have been about to kill them, but at least there were tasteful furnishings and as much buttock-level auto-dispensed toilet tissue as a horse could wish for. Unsurprisingly, Julian, the man who originally liberated them, gets less than a hero's welcome when he shows up again, bent on finishing the job of setting our animals free from the trappings of man. Forced to strip naked, sleep outdoors, forage for berries, even urinate in the open air, an already tense situation escalates into a full-scale siege when Mark the bird finally snaps and goes mad with a gun. With the house surrounded by hundreds of armed police and Julian issuing a demand that all animals everywhere are given free passage to 'somewhere nice, like Tuscany', it looks like the end for our furry fugitives.