Artist creates giant copy of King Kong work for his friend

John Hunt with the super-sized version of his Edinburgh-set King Kong work, inspired by the 1933 film

The two-metre-long piece shows the iconic film image of King Kong terrorising Fay Wray - but instead of clinging to the top of the Empire State Building, he is swinging from the Balmoral Hotel's clock tower.

The piece, created as a surprise gift, will be delivered to its astonished new owner today after being paraded right up the Royal Mile, with the Capital's skyline as a backdrop.

The giant piece has been created as a gift for St Giles' Cafe owner Fred Pellet by his friend, the artist John Hunt.

Mr Hunt said the cafe owner had admired a run of smaller prints he created of the painting, and jokingly demanded a huge version to hang on the cafe wall.

The artist, who usually works on paintings of musicians, decided to take him up on the idea, and has spent three months secretly perfecting the giant artwork in his studio on Jeffrey Street.

Today, he is due to turn heads by walking it up the Royal Mile to present it to Mr Pellet at the cafe in St Giles' Street.

Mr Hunt said he thought Edinburgh's skyline was just crying out for a visit from the giant gorilla. He said: "It's an iconic skyline and King Kong is pretty iconic and I thought 'Wouldn't it be brilliant if King Kong went on holiday with Fay Wray, and where would they go? They'd go to Edinburgh - and where would they be? On top of the Balmoral clock tower, wouldn't they?'

"If you're going to do King Kong you might as well do him big. It's going to hang in St Giles' Cafe because Fred the owner saw it and said 'It's not big enough, I want it big'.

"So this is the massive one - it's unique."

He said it would be a challenge to carry it up the Royal Mile, but he hoped passers-by would enjoy the spectacle, and might even lend a hand. "It weighs a tonne, it will never be moved off that wall. We don't know how many people it will take to carry it up the road - we might have to say to people 'Give us a hand with King Kong'. We had to get it up there somehow, and we thought it would be really quirky to see this massive image of King Kong and pairs of legs sticking out underneath."

Mr Hunt said he was looking forward to seeing the reaction of the cafe owner when the artwork arrived at around 1.15pm today. "It's a surprise to Fred because he'd been wanting this massive King Kong for ages. He gets very emotional and it will be really funny, he's a really Gallic character."

Mr Hunt, who has a permanent exhibition of his paintings of musicians at the Jazz Bar in Chambers Street is also a blues musician and will be performing there during this year's Fringe.