Japan is running out of bananas as shoppers cleared the shelves following a TV appearance by opera singer turned musical theatre star Kumiko Mori.
Mori revealed that enjoying a banana every morning helped her drop 7kg from her ample 100kg proportions in just 6 weeks, prompting thousands of tubby Japanese to follow suit.
Not that she was too bothered about her size in her opera singing days: "the heroine Violetta is supposed to die of tuberculosis, but she is usually played by overweight singers like me so I always imagined that she was really suffering from diabetes. These kinds of thoughts just crack me up."
Here's a video about the banana diet phenomenon:
