Near Hyde Park, London, a man was found on Friday April 22, 2005 in his luxury top floor apartment burned beyond recognition. By the time the fire department responded, all that was found remaining was a smouldering heap of ash in an unscathed extra-large Lazyboy recliner, along with a left foot and right arm from the elbow down...

“I called the Fire Department right away,” said the elderly Gertrude Dakine, a neighbor of the burn victim. “I never approached him, but I swore he was Luciano Pavarotti himself. I squealed like a schoolgirl when he walked by. He had an air of luxury about him. I’d even hear him sing. That Italian tenor, how angelic!” Other neighbors claimed that the man didn’t frequent his apartment often and that the elderly lady was in fact, a ‘basket case’.



The IFE’s had some initial concern that the victim could have been Mr. Pavarotti. “The pictures all looked like him,” said Ms. Holycross, “and he had all of Pavarotti’s music on CD.” The real Mr. Pavarotti didn’t respond to phone calls to his luxury villa in Italy, so DNA testing revealed, much to the operatic world’s relief, that the remains didn’t belong to the most famous of opera stars, but actually to one Michael Richard Clark III, who was said to be a Luciano Pavarotti impersonator, performing at Wigmore Hall for tourists and other visitors.

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