Spot the dog’s seemingly harmless next door neighbour Steve the monkey has gone from zero to 100 in just a couple of pages in the timeless classic Spot Stays Overnight. In the otherwise heartwarming narrative of a young pup having a sleepover at a mate’s place, Steve gets his creep on the moment he and Spot get out into the backyard for a play.

At first, Steve point blank tells Spot to “Swing on the tyre” while he ominously hovers above the aforementioned tyre swing and brandishes a pair of binoculars.

Following that blunt request, and with Spot suitably distracted while trying to climb into the tyre swing, Steve focuses his binoculars over the fence to Spot’s mum’s place where he stares for an uncomfortably long period of time. While a random blue bird looks on disapprovingly at Steve’s leering, the little monkey then loudly announces, “Here comes your mum, Spot”, subjecting the poor little pup to possibly his first ever mum joke.

While Steve’s overall behaviour improves in the pages that follow, the damage done over those two scenes is enough to ruin his overall reputation. One local mum was so disgusted by Steve’s behaviour that she contacted The Watsonia Bugle to say, “Just have a look at him up that tree. What a creep! If he lived next door to me I’d be getting blockout blinds ASAP.”

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