Maschler was transfixed.
He sent Morris a monthly telegram for years, begging him to write it. It was finally done in a month of frantic scribbling and, when complete, caused eyes to pop.
The Naked Ape was an overnight sensation, eventually selling 20 million copies.
It applied Darwinian logic to human activity – including fighting, feeding, comfort and sex.
Copulation, Morris claimed, was not mainly about producing children. It was, he insisted, more to do with cementing the pair bond “by providing mutual reward for sexual partners”.
We were, he said, “a very sexy ape”.
He had taken a job running the Institute of Contemporary Arts but, now fabulously wealthy, he quit.
He ignored his mother’s advice to bank the money, bought a 27-room villa in the Mediterranean and thoroughly enjoyed himself – sailing in summer and writing in winter.
Back home, his book was proving controversial.
Some disliked his dismissal of religion as a biological tendency to submit to an alpha male.
Feminists were furious with his portrayal of men as “risk-taking” hunter-gatherers who drove human evolution, while women sat at home in the cave.