Just who is Tarzan ? - (Sunday 20 July)

Johnny Weismuller - some would say the best Tarzan

Just a short interlude between announcing the amazing venues for Tarzans Bananathon !

Just who is Tarzan, where did he come from, when did he arrive ?

Tarzan, as we all know, is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the wild African jungle by apes, who later returns to civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer.

He was created by Edgar Rice Burroughs and first appeared in the novel Tarzan of the Apes (magazine publication 1912, book publication 1914), and then in twenty-three sequels and innumerable works in other media.

In many ways, Tarzan's jungle upbringing gave him abilities above and beyond those of ordinary humans.


These abilities include climbing, clinging, and leaping as well as any great ape, as well as walking on all fours exceptionally well, despite his human frame. His senses are enhanced; he is able to smell food or poachers at least two thirds of a mile away (in comparison Tony can smell a pork pie at over 400 yards if that’s anything to go by), and hear approaching stampedes from two miles. He can read body language exceptionally well. He is an excellent judge of character.


His strength, speed, agility, reflexes, balance, flexibility, reaction time, and swimming abilities are much better than normal – just like our own modern day LRF Tarzan. He has wrestled full grown bull apes and gorillas, rhinos, crocodiles, anacondas, sharks, big cats and even dinosaurs – perhaps an idea for the party at Tiger Tiger.

He has bent iron bars with his bare hands and easily lifted large treasure chests one-handed that four burly sailors had trouble with – perhaps this can be re-enacted in the Manto bar.


He is capable of communicating with every species of animal in the jungle. He can recover from wounds that would kill normal men, such as gunshot wounds to the head. He was trained as a soldier in World War I and possesses advanced learning skills which enabled him to teach himself how to read with nothing but a few books. He is attacked by a sorcerer who is using a magic rock for mind control, only to discover Tarzan is immune to mental probing. Eventually, Tarzan becomes immortal due to a witch doctor's potion.

Some interesting and mudane Tarzan Trivia : Tarzana, California, where Burroughs made his home, was renamed in honor of Tarzan in 1927.

Michael Heseltine, a former British MP and senior government minister, is nicknamed Tarzan in honour of his having once seized the ceremonial mace in the House of Commons and swung it about his head in the middle of a debate. This action, together with Heseltine's flowing golden hair, was said to be distinctly in the style of Tarzan. The nickname has also been combined with his name into the portmanteau nickname Hezza.


The March 1959 issue of Man's Adventure published a story titled “The Man Who Really Was… Tarzan” by Thomas Llewellan Jones. This article claims that Tarzan was based on William Charles Mildin, 14th Earl of Streatham, who supposedly lived among the apes from 1868 (age 11) to 1883, before returning to England. None of the news stories claimed in the article exist in the archives of the London papers, and there is no record of such an Earl in the British peerage. Nonetheless, the story sometimes resurfaces as “fact.”

Tarzan has even starred in a condom advert on TV - see picture below