oh my loves (and such vaughn fans as there may be): i was sorting old files and found this which he had written about the piped music (flower duet from lakme) at the dentist’s (he sounds a little high, just after his root canal) — and it cracks me up every time:

v: “in my mind, i’m unable to separate this from the famous british airways commercial of the 1993-4 season, featuring lots of people on a big plain coming together to form a picture of a globe, the same commercial spoofed in the most recently overplayed ad from carlton draught set to carmina burana, which is italian for crimson banana. which only goes to show that, despite what some might say, opera isn’t completely wasted on me.”

(how, incidentally, does one say crimson banana in italian? i would have ventured say pisang merah in malay (though that is only red) and 枣红色的香蕉 in chinese。（赤红 seems more like scarlet to me, and 朱红 too much like cinnabar and vermilion, but 枣红 can seem more wine than crimson.))