In 1993, when I was hitching around New Zealand, I went through a place called Te Awamutu. It's the town mentioned in the first verse of "Mean To Me," the Crowded House song: "and the sound of Te Awamutu had a truly sacred ring." It's where Neil and Tim Finn were born, and where they grew up. It's a nice little town.

The guy who gave me a lift there claimed that he'd gone to school with Neil and Tim.

At first this seemed implausible, but then I had a closer look at him. "Implausible" was rapidly upgraded to "impossible." Even a conservative estimate of his age would put him upwards of the 75 year mark. The word "wizened" leapt to mind.

Upon a bit of casual cross-examination, it turns out that he did indeed go to the same school as the brothers Finn. But he was attending classes there at least twenty years before they were born. It's even possible that he'd graduated from the school before the boys' parents had met. It's possible that he'd graduated before the boys' parents had been born. But, as he said, it was the same school.

This guy was distinctive in another way: he was driving a tractor. He'd been a farmer in the area for something like half a century, and he told every new face he met that he'd gone to school with Neil Finn.

"Tell me," I said, "have you ever thought about a career in advertising?"