For seven years, the lovable and laugh-out-loud antics of the cheeky monkeys of Monkey Life have captivated viewers watching Dr Alison Cronin and her team at Dorset’s Monkey World sanctuary. She talks to Susan Griffin about the series’ appeal

Monkey life is back for its eighth series. Why do you think the show is so enduringly popular?

The popularity doesn’t surprise me because the lives of the monkeys and the apes are so much like ours.

People become wrapped up in whether or not the baby orangutans will thrive in the creche or whether the marmosets find love and support in their own family group.

People are drawn to it because it’s a reflection of their own lives. This is about our closest living relatives and their lives and why it’s important for them to live appropriate lives.

Monkey Life is really a soap opera – we call it “BeastEnders” – where the social lives, love made and lost, the family dynamics and a lot of the medical conditions our animals suffer, are the same as people.

Do you have a favourite monkey?

It is honest to say that I don’t as all of our rescued primates have their own needy and emotive stories. You can’t help but sympathise, empathise and feel for them when they have been torn away from their families and homes for whatever reason.

They are all beautiful and wonderful in their own way... even our affectionately nicknamed “ugly monkeys” (stump-tailed macaques that were rescued from the black market pet trade) who are not the most beautiful looking, or smelling.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I have always loved animals and working with them ever since I was a child. I studied primates at Cambridge University and learned so much about the biology, behaviour, and ecology of our closest living relatives.

Now I get to use that knowledge to help give some of the most endangered animals on this planet their lives back again.

It is never an easy job, and it can be very upsetting at times, but when you see one of our monkeys or apes go from being torn from their families in the wild, mistreated physically and mentally, shipped around the world, and sold to the highest bidder, to being able to live a more natural and even happy life again with others of their own kind, you know you are doing the right thing.

Does your job ever give you sleepless nights?

Regularly. It is a huge responsibility to care for such needy monkeys and apes from such weird and tragic backgrounds.

Some primates come to us in such a bad way that you don’t know if they are going to make it... and some don’t. Managing the care of live beings is stressful as there are bound to be dramas.

We have a wonderful dedicated team at the park who all work tirelessly to make the lives of our rescued primates as good as possible every day of the year.

This makes the difficult times a bit easier to manage as we are all working together for the welfare of our monkeys and apes.

Was this a childhood passion of yours?

Definitely. I grew up in southern California watching, and often catching and releasing, wildlife on the hillside behind my home.

I rode horses a lot and always wanted to be outdoors investigating the tide pools at the beach or catching lizards and snakes on the hillsides. It was no surprise to my parents that I ended up working with wildlife.

What is a typical day like for you?

There really is no “typical” day. Mostly I am stuck in the office getting everything and everybody organised, whether it be for a specialist vet or doctor visit, and making sure all our monkey and ape facilities are up to scratch.

These are their homes and if they are going to be happy and healthy they need to be worked on constantly. I arrange all the rescues both internationally and from the legal trade in primates as pets in the UK.

There is also a lot of unglamorous work in running the park and making sure that everything is as good as possible.

Do you get much time off?

Not really, the park and our rescued primates take up most of my time, but I do love what I do. My husband, Jim Cronin founded the park in 1987, and died following a short battle with liver cancer in 2007.

At that time a lot of people asked me if I would continue. It was a no-brainer, I had all those faces looking back at me, needing our care and that gave me the strength to keep going.

• The new series of Monkey Life is showing on Pick on Mondays.