I used to sing a lot of the Desert Song numbers in old peoples homes during the early 80s along with Granada and other tenor stuff. Joseph Locke is still popular in the UK There are people in the Tax Office very anxious to meet him ! - they made a film about him as I recall

The lure of exotic locations and peoples is a theme going through literature e g Count Dracula - The Sheik - etc. Describing someone as a sheik in the 30s meant he was quite good looking in a dark romantic sort of way