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Some believe that our power to communicate with one another through language is what makes us humans unique. So what happens when other species start communicating with us in a way we can understand?

In some cases, they can be profoundly useful. Recently, a man was convicted of burglary after Charlie, an orange-winged Amazon parrot squawked frantically to alert his owner to the burglar’s presence. Back in 2010, Paul the psychic octopus correctly predicted the outcomes of eight FIFA World Cup matches, including the final. And Koko the gorilla, who died in 2018, learned to use modified sign language and was thought to understand two thousand words of spoken English, helping to deepen our emotional understanding of some of our closest primate relatives.

The Talking Mongoose, a new drama-documentary from Radio 4, finds out what happened when a ´óÏó´«Ã½ employee tried to pursue the curious case of a mongoose who could speak. Chaos ensued…

Think of the Isle of Man and, by association, you might think of its tail-less Manx cats, or its famed Manx kippers – kiln-smoked herrings enjoyed for breakfast across the island and beyond. In the 1930s, however, the creature causing a stir both on the island and overseas was neither of these things. It was a mongoose. And not just any mongoose. This was a talking mongoose who went by the name of Gef. He resided at Doarlish Cashen (Cashen’s Gap), an isolated farmhouse where he had befriended Voirrey Irving, a farmer’s daughter with whom he began communicating. Gef, it was claimed, was 80 years old and had been born in Delhi in 1852.

Effing and Geffing

Gef was capricious and sweary with unpredictable mood swings from quarrelsome to charming. He had a curious way of introducing himself to the Irvings, with a surprisingly poetic turn of phrase, saying: “I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you’d faint, you’d be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt!”

The Irvings were not, however, petrified, mummified, turned into stone or pillars of salt. If anything, the mongoose proved useful to the family by catching rabbits around the farm. He was also somewhat of a sleuth and was said to travel the island spying on farms and surreptitiously collecting gossip from the locals which he would relay to Voirrey and her dad Jim (apparently he was less communicative with Voirrey’s mother Margaret).

The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap

The baffling story of this articulate, nosy mongoose piqued the interest of Richard Lambert, then editor of a ´óÏó´«Ã½ magazine called the Listener. He journeyed to the Isle of Man with Harry Price in the hope of meeting Gef. The mongoose was, unfortunately, unavailable for comment and did not materialise for the duration of their stay. The Irvings sent plasticine imprints of Gef’s teeth and paws for Harry Price to inspect. He passed these on to the who concluded that the paw print probably belonged to a dog, but certainly wasn’t that of a mongoose. A fur sample, too, was found to be dog hair thought to belong to the Irvings’ sheepdog.

Though some people claimed to have seen the mongoose, he had a habit of vanishing when outsiders came to investigate. In 1936, their findings were presented in a book, The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap, a neutral account which did not concretely state either way whether or not Gef was the real deal.

Causing chaos at the ´óÏó´«Ã½

So how did the mischievous mongoose come to cause havoc at the ´óÏó´«Ã½? Unfortunately, it was not through a radio appearance and his tones were never heard on the airwaves.

As well as his position at the ´óÏó´«Ã½, Richard Lambert was on the board of the . So too was a woman named Florence Levita, with whom Richard had an argument (the details of which have grown hazy over time). Keen to knock him off his perch, Florence’s husband Sir Cecil Levita alleged to Richard’s boss and friend that Richard was not fit to be on the board, suggesting that his pursuit of the talking mongoose meant he was off his head.

When told what Sir Cecil had said, Richard, understandably, took umbrage and sued him for slander. Sir Cecil had friends in very high places at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ (namely Lord Reith, then Director-General) who prompted the Controller of Administration (confused yet?) to pressurise Richard into withdrawing his legal action.

Richard persisted, and it paid off: he was awarded a whopping £7600 in compensation. The Mongoose Case highlighted some problematic personnel policies, so the Government commissioned an inquiry into the ´óÏó´«Ã½’s treatment of staff. As a result, their policies and conditions were redrafted.

What of the Irvings and their fractious furry friend? The family left their farm and the island in 1937. Whether Gef was a figment of Voirrey’s imagination, a stray mongoose introduced to the island to control the rabbit population, a spirit who haunted the farm or something else entirely we’ll never know. As for Gef, he went surprisingly quiet…