To Them, It’s Just The Simian Old, Simian Old

Jane Goodall may be a world-renowned authority on chimpanzees, but she got her start studying pigs.

To pay the airfare to the remote site of her first research job, Goodall recalls how she tied on an apron and took food orders.

“I got a job as a waitress and saved my tip money until I could afford to travel to Africa,” the animal-behavior expert says.

Goodall, now 63, no longer lives among the chimpanzees that she studied for 35 years, but she still returns several times a year for visits to her old stomping grounds in Tanzania.

And while she may be gone most of the time, she remains far from forgotten.

Says Goodall: “I go and sit and they come up and sit beside me and they’re thinking, ‘Oh, it’s her again.”’

Loose talk

Drew Barrymore, on her cat (in the London Daily Mirror): “He is such an important part of my life that if I die before him I want a little bit of my ashes put in his food so that I can finally live inside him.”

Maybe you know him as the bassist for Dogstar

Keanu Reeves turns 33 today.

Not exactly one of your more charming snakes

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who replaces Judge Joseph Wapner on the new edition of “The People’s Court” that begins airing next week, is taking his early cases in stride, awarding $1,500 to the owner of a chihuahua that was eaten by a neighbor’s boa constrictor. “I awarded her the value of the dog,” Koch explained. “Under California law, there is no compensation for bereavement over a dead dog.”

But later, they still get together for cocktails

Brigitte Bardot, the former French sex kitten turned animal rights activist, has succeeded in changing a cruel annual tradition in the Transylvanian hamlet of Csurgonagymarton - the ritual beheading of roosters by blindfolded men swinging sticks. Wary of negative publicity, town officials have agreed to use clay roosters instead.

Guess that’s what you call a fly in the oinkment

Christine Cavanaugh was paid only $30,000 for providing the voice of the titular pig in the original hit movie “Babe,” so when negotiations began for a sequel, she upped her demand to $200,000. Producers instead signed E.G. Daily, Cavanaugh’s voice-over partner on Nickelodeon’s “Rugrats” show, for $50,000.

The ‘bi’ in her personal ad stood for ‘amphibian’

Comic actor Jim Carrey, whose marriage to actress Lauren Holly is on the rocks, can comfort himself with memories of one of his more unusual romantic encounters. “The girl asked me to do an impression of Kermit the Frog while we made love,” said Carrey, who was rendered speechless (a rare occurrence) by the request. “Of course, I just about shrank to microscopic dimensions!”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino