As some of you know, Penny (my wife) bought one of those new fangled Mini Cooper S's a couple of months ago. She's not generally a car person but is well and truly smitten with this one. So much so that she's recently joined a Mini Forum is busily making lots of new friends (sound familiar?).
Anyway, tonight we went off to our first Mini meet. 15 or so Minis in convoy from Colchester to Frinton, where we parked up by the greensward, did the usual tyre kicking and chatting thing, followed by fish and chips out of the paper.
Chatting to the guy we'd parked next to, who'd turned up in a shiny new ragtop Cooper S. Talking about where we'd come from and what we did for a living etc (as you do). Mentioned that he came from Maldon where he runs a precision engineering company. Vague bells began to ring.
"Don't suppose you've ever owned a Lotus Esprit?" asked I. "Err, yes...two actually" he answered, looking completely perplexed (we'd never met before).
As some of you will have guessed by now, it turned out to be Paul Webber.
Weird or what?