An orangutan is recovering after going on the run at Dublin Zoo for an hour.

The orang-utan named Maggie made her bold bid for freedom yesterday afternoon after 24 years in captivity.

Zookeepers believe she made a long stretch for branches on the other side of a moat surrounding her enclosure, grabbed a wall and climbed over.

AdvertisementShe then made her way past enclosures holding goats and snow leopards.

She was eventually spotted by a group of schoolchildren on top of the tiger compound, about 60 metres away.

Zookeepers managed to confront Maggie and shoot her with a tranquilliser dart gun.

They believe she escaped because she was looking for a mate.

Dublin Zoo is stressing that at no stage were visitors in any danger during the drama.

The Criminal Assets Bureau has successfully seized and sold four luxury cars and a jeep from a Traveller halting site in Waterford.

Today the High Court granted CAB an order to seize the money it received from the sale of the jeep, the final vehicle to be disposed of.

The CAB had been investigating the activities of the Reilly family from Kilbarry in Co Waterford for some time.

In a series of raids in 2005, the Bureau seized two new Audis, two new Volkswagen Golfs and a new Mitsubishi Pajero Jeep owned by Patrick 'rubber' Reilly and his extended family.

CAB also seized €37,000 in cash.

The cars and jeep were sold immediately because their value could depreciate and CAB sought disposal orders.

CAB officer Chief Superintendent John O'Mahony told the court that he believed the cash and the cars were the proceeds of crime, in particular burglaries, thefts and distraction crimes.

The High Court has already permitted CAB to retain the money from the four cars and today it granted the final Section 3 order under the Proceeds of Crime Act for the Mitsubishi jeep.

To viewers of his TV series, Bear Grylls is the daredevil adventurer who catapults himself into world's worst 'hellholes' and then survives on his wits alone.

But it has emerged that far from roughing it in brutal environments, the former SAS man actually spent nights in hotels during filming of his Channel 4 show.

The Eton- educated 33-year- old is also alleged to have choreographed parts of Born Survivor, with many of his spectacular stunts carefully set up by the production crew.


Channel 4 last night began an investigation into the claims, which follow a number of embarrassing incidents in which programmes screened by the station were found to have misled the public.

Grylls's show attracted 1.4million viewers when it was shown in March and April, with audiences enthralled as he demonstrated gruesome survival tips that included sucking the fluid from fish eyeballs and squeezing water from animal dung.

But an adviser to Born Survivor yesterday claimed that many of his other escapades were not exactly as they seemed on TV.

In one episode filmed in California's Sierra Nevada mountains he was shown biting off the head of a snake for breakfast and boasting that he was living on 'just a water bottle, a cup and a flint for making fire'.

Viewers were not told that he was actually spending some nights in the Pines Resort hotel at Bass Lake, where the rooms have Internet access and is advertised as 'a cosy getaway for families' complete with blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

In another episode when Grylls declared he was a 'real life Robinson Crusoe' stuck on a desert island, he was actually on an outlying part of the Hawaiian archipelago and retired to a motel at nightfall.

Mark Weinert, a survival consultant brought in for the programme, said one show also wrongly gave the impression that the adventurer built a Polynesian- style raft using only materials around him, including bamboo and palm leaves for a sail.

Mr Weinert had in fact led a team that built the raft, which was then dismantled so that Grylls could be shown constructing it on camera.

In another episode, Grylls was filmed attempting to lasso 'wild' mustang in the Sierra Nevada, when the horses were actually tame and had been brought in by trailer from a nearby trekking station.

'If you really believe everything happens the way it is shown on TV, you are being a little bit naive,' Mr Weinert told the Sunday Times.

Channel 4 confirmed that Grylls had used hotels during expeditions and ordered the production company that made the programme to investigate the other claims.

A spokesman said: 'We take any allegations of misleading our audiences seriously.

'Bear does do all his own stunts and does put himself in perilous situations.

'But Born Survivor is not an observational documentary series but a "how to" guide to basic survival techniques in extreme environments. The programme explicitly does not claim that presenter Bear Grylls's experience is one of unaided solo survival.'

Grylls had earlier told how Channel 4 bosses had pitched the series to him, saying: 'We just drop you into a lot of different hellholes equipped with nothing, and you do what you have to do to survive.'