Words: flavescent, adj.

ALEC GUINNESS'S delightful A Positively Final Appearance (1998) has a passion for words: he hefts the OED to verify Peter Ackroyd's claim that Sir Thomas More first used many unexpected phrases, and notes of his own garden, "trees are still remarkably green: I had half hoped to show off a newly discovered word - flavescent - but that will have to wait for another couple of weeks".

From the Latin, it means, botanically, to turn yellow, but could be used of a new Guinness passion: The Simp-sons. Except they are yellow from the start. In a splendid moment, the sperm that do not become Maggie smack their tiny heads with a "doh!". Could the animators cajole him into one last role, a satire of Star Wars? After all, he figured in the anagram quiz of another character, Lisa: genuine class.