You know when you have something nicked in London that the chances of ever seeing it again are pretty slim, but it turns out you can help the police get your stuff back simply by ensuring all your belongings are monkeys:

A squirrel monkey stolen from a zoo has been found playing with children in south London. Zoo keepers at Chessington World of Adventures in Surrey discovered he was missing from his enclosure on Monday. They said SpongeBob was not a pet but a wild animal and people were warned not to approach the monkey. A member of the public found him playing with children in Clapham on Wednesday and handed him in safely to police in Brixton, officers said.

Good job they did too. We get the impression that the detectives assigned to the case weren't the sharpest bananas in the bunch:

"It is difficult to see how he got there by his own steam. We are treating this as a burglary. We are almost convinced he was taken by somebody, because of things like the way the fences at the zoo were cut."

Unless of course it was a breakout...

But, there you have it then - a happier ending than the furry fellow who saved Indiana Jones' life in Raiders of the Lost Ark by snaffling the poison (or indeed the little chaps whose heads end up as soup bowls in the inferior Temple of Doom.

The little guy did have a bit of a rough few days though after what was "a disturbing experience" for him, during which he suffered from weight-loss, hunger and stress. We bet he got a great welcome home as his disappearance left all the squirrel monkeys in a state of turmoil as he was the only breeding male in the group.

It was exactly the same thing when David Lee Roth left Van Halen.