"The Desert Song" is pure Hollywood schlock and, as such, is hardly worth dissecting. It's a misch-masch of improbable plotlines and scenes using ideas borrowed from "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and capitalising on the interest of the public in the persona of people like Lawrence of Arabia.

The thing is a reflection of the money-making mores of the period - the mid-1920s - and the social and racial attitudes of the day. Is there any value in analysing it?

And, yes, I've seen it, with a rather drunk Joseph Locke (a popular Irish tenor of the 1940s and 1950s) warbling "Goodbye, goodbye..." and wobbling scenery, in a theatre in the Lancashire seaside town of Blackpool. Perfection!