ABSTRACT
Before it was a cinema, the Scala had been London’s first Primatarium, a vast ape house, painted jungles crawling across its walls and its sepulchral auditorium filled with astroturf. When I last looked there were still deserted cages in the basement and if you inhaled deeply enough you could just catch the faint hint of musk and dried urine, a safari smell that took me back to my earliest childhood.
