When one of our readers, Tam from Georgia, contacted us to say Yorkshire rockers, GU Medicine, were going to perform a duet with a penguin, a real live penguin, we had to check the date to make sure it was not the 1st of April.
Ricky the rockhopper penguin, who is a resident of ZSL London Zoo, will be joining one of our favourite bands for a special one off track for Jagermeister next month. The track is to be recorded early August and will be released as a free download on 16th August.
Tam was especially excited as she was Ricky’s "mum" and liking rock music too, she was proud of the collaboration, telling us when we spoke to her "My friends adopted Ricky from the London Zoo for me at my birthday a few months ago as everyone knows how much I love penguins. As soon as I saw Ricky for the first time I felt he was very different from other penguins around him, and now that I hear this news I am really proud. I love rock music myself, and it is especially a great surprise that Ricky has got into this type of music, and that GU Medicine is recording a song with him. I can not wait to see the results, and once again I'm very pleased with my adopted penguin son. I hope this is just a start. I believe Ricky will bring lots of surprises in future. He will rock the music world!!!"
When speaking to GU Medicine, Ryan Senior explained that his fascination with penguins started at London Zoo "When I was younger I visited London Zoo and saw the penguins but I never imagined that one day I would actually get the opportunity to record a song with one of them! I thought feeding them would be the closest I ever got!"
Speaking on behalf of ZSL London Zoo, Head of Birds, Adrian Walls said: "Ricky has a big personality as visitors to our zoo and staff will testify, and although he has never worked with a music group before I’m sure he will be in fine voice on August 3rd". We then asked if this was a start of a new career for Ricky to which a London Zoo Spokesperson informed us "Ricky is pretty content with his current status as star penguin in the pool at ZSL London Zoo, and whilst he's definitely enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame he's not got any more plans to make a career out of music…"
You can catch GU Medicine on the Jagermeister stage at Sonisphere this Sunday. Ricky can be seen swimming, hopping on rocks and being a rock star at London Zoo every day.
The yet to be recorded track can be downloaded for free from www.jagermeister.co.uk