One thing I love about BIR cooking, is the whole base concept. Once you have it, you can have a curry in minutes.
On the other hand, when I'm out of base, curry is off the menu, unless I have a few hours to make base.
An "express" base, or curry-in-a-hurry, isn't a bad idea. On the other hand, most of the base-less curries I've made (i.e. those that start with fry a pile of onion and garlic, add a tin of tomatoes...) aren't nearly as good as the base curries I've made.
CA - I'd be interested to see your CIAH recipe, and how you change the main curry recipe to suit. Also how you rate it (and Chris, yours too) vs traditional BIR base curries.
-- Josh