Funny thing, language. Walking through SouthGate I heard a young Asian chap who seemed to be repeating the words "How now brown cow?" to his serious-looking companions. I don't know if this phrase actually means anything in Thai or if he was rehearsing for an Oriental versionMy Fair Lady.

Once a friend of mine ordered a driving licence salad from an admirably implacable waiter in a Barcelona restaurant. And on the sunny island of Grenada the laid-back barman in a rural rum shack offered to share his pot with us. To the utmost disappointment of some members of the party this turned out to be a big pan of greasy chicken and goat stew.

In Rotterdam the most popular white sliced bread is baked by Bumm's Bakery, presumably pronounced boomsh, but I never dared ask for it by name. In Austria, one of our actors, a strict vegetarian, remonstrated with us in no uncertain terms when we spoke English to a waitress. He placed his order in what he thought was perfect German and sat back with an air of hauteur. We got what we wanted, he most certainly didn't. Kase is indeed cheese, but leberkase can only be described as a massive meaty slab of Spam fritter.

We once toured Europe with a classical music spoof called Scarlatti's Birthday. After a performance in Hamburg, some rather earnest students came to the stage door. They demanded to know what Herr Handel had meant when he referred to some complicated baroque Jews in the show. We were mystified until it turned out the actor had used the lazy English 'ch' instead of the more precise and Teutonic 't' in the word 'tunes'. The Germans had misheard, but from then on he always referred to his music as 'baroque melodies'.

In the same show Handel would marvel at the kitsch furnishings in Scarlatti's nouveau-riche home. Standing at the door aghast he would say 'Just look at all this stuff', at which the German audience would fall around in paroxysms of laughter. We never did get to the bottom of what they thought he'd said, but we made dead sure it stayed in the script.