Pavarotti: not enough food in world

The cause of world hunger has an unlikely new champion – gigantic opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.

The Italian tenor staged a UN concert in Monaco last night to "raise awareness for the fight against hunger and malnutrition".

But anti-hunger campaigners have roundly condemned the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a UN body, for enrolling Pavarotti.

"It's like getting Jeffrey Archer to promote honesty," said Barry Coates, director of the World Development Movement.

The FAO believes that overeating and obesity are also a form of malnutrition. "We are very grateful to Pavarotti. Would it be better if we used anorexic people?" the FAO said yesterday.

The singer says that he wants a world where "not a single person would see his or her possibilities for the future limited by malnutrition".

But critics says that this is precisely what has happened to him. The man who boasts that he was once "quick as a lynx" as a goalkeeper for his local football team in Modena, now appears to have difficulty getting around the stage. He reputedly has trouble standing, takes ground-floor hotel rooms, and is driven to the stagedoor. Rehearsal snacks have been said to run to 20 large rolls and four litres of orange juice.

His actual tonnage remains a closely guarded secret. "No one will ever know the real truth" he once said, "unless they weigh me after I'm dead."