who designed el hombre malo's band's album cover, I even passed by him in the corridor outside our office.

My best mate went to school with Idiotbear.

... violent, knuckle scraping U2 fans, I am delighted to have met none of them here at all.

A few years ago, I sat next to a rather jolly, bespectacled, balding businessman who turned out to be someone I'd last seen at Uni, hair down to his waist, gyrating to The Edgar Broughton Band and a healthy tab of acid.

And not long after graduating I bumped into my sworn enemy from halls of residence in Harrods. She had obviously Done Very Well For Herself, and I'm ashamed to say I blew that month's rent on a pair of gloves in a moment of sheer show-offery, and had to sneak back later to return them.

It's been amazing to stumble across Geacher though, even if his memory of me errs on the side of flattery.

I thought you meant the one I made myself which turned out, erm, low-er and behold-er than intended. I had to sneak out of the house and then spent the evening rushing off to readjust all the stuffing in my bra.

Incidentally - were you part of the 'who stole my onion' episode that ended with that strange Maths teacher being carted off? I still feel a bit guilty about that though all I did was a bit of pen clicking.

And was it you who went to the IOW festival?

I was at school with Mrs Captain Underpants. Though from what I can glean I may have been in the year above.

It's no matter. She doesn't remember me.

I went to school with the (new?) drummer from Kasabian. He was very far from rock and roll then. very very far. Nickname was Turkey. A nice person tho

is the son-in-law of a member of a certain Merseyside beat combo of some repute.

One notable episode.

In the year above me at school was a girl called Mandy Oakley. We'd been going through school sort of together since the age of about four and, whilst not friends, relations were cordial. She was a very good dancer, very tall, very pretty, very long of limb but not quite cool enough to be a member of the school Glamour Squad.

She had the last laugh, being offered, straight out of school, a contract to be one of the Bluebell Girls in Paris.

A couple of years later, I was at sixth form. Walking through Southampton one Saturday with my new mate Neil Kenney, a tall, impossibly beautiful girl ran up to me, gave me a huge kiss and an effusive hug and proceeded to tell me all about life in Paris.

'Twas Mandy.

Neil viewed me with awed respect from that day onwards.

at the Town and Country Club, waiting for Johnny Clegg to come on, my wife and I were chatting to the woman next to us. Like much of the audience, she was another Sarth Efrican ex-pat.
Within minutes they realised they'd met before - playing netball at primary school in SA over 20 years earlier!

I was doing the "round the world" thing with a friend and after 7 months or so of fun, found myself in New Zealand - a hostel in Wellington, to be precise. For reasons which escape me, we were standing in a stairwell, talking about some of the people who had been on our course back in Teesside, all those months ago. "That Norman, eh? He was a bit of a twat!"

Bugger me if that very Norman didn't choose that moment to walk up the stairs. "Er, hello lads!".

Feather, knocked down, small world, jaws dropped etc.

Entirely unrelated, but in the same hostel, I got very drunk with a farmer-boy from Deal. He staggered off to the toilet, and I remember saying "Rich, I don't think that's the gents. Turned out to be a room full of Germans, and one of them was more sad than angry - "Vy? Vy are you pissink on my rooksack??"

I don't think I know anyone on the site, but if you drank anywhere on the Gloucester Road, Bristol in the last 20 years, there's a fair chance we have a pub in common.

At the age of 10 or so I was on holiday in Kenya with my parents. I spent a lot of time using the diving board of the hotel swimming pool. After attempting one particularly acrobatic manoeuvre I landed on another boy's head. After he emerged dazed and confused from under the water I realized that I'd just brained someone I'd been at primary school with. My only memory of him was that the kids used to sing "..... .... did a pooh in his pants."

I bumped into my best friend's mum from when I was about nine on a river boat in Thailand. She was so shocked she had to sit down.

After my brother's wedding in Las Vegas some years ago (she left him eventually for a woman but that's another story) we found ourselves sitting behind some fellow guests at a pizza place in New York - I mean, it's a big place!

I was in the band for the show "Hair" at Oxford Poly, and the bass player was a Welsh bloke called Andy who I didn't really know, but he was a decent cove and we got on well for the week of the show and went our separate ways. 9 months later I was standing on the roadside in Penarth, S Wales at 7 a.m. trying to hitch a lift, and guess who walked up. Yep, bass player Andy, on his way to work!

Not Word connected, but on topic:

I have some Facebook friends, none of whom know each other, but all have another person in common, who I don't know.

(I only know this because I was nosing through their friends lists!)

What's the correct thing to do with something like this. First of all, these three people all know myself and this other person, should I introduce the three?

And the mutual friend of all these people, should I introduce myself to them? I feel I should, if only because we have three separate friends in common.

Or should I just ignore these facts and not social network?

Ah the stresses of modern life.

(I'm not even going to think about the ex girlfriend I've not seen for 20 years who is on the friend list at least 12 of my friends....)

Forgot all about this one....A friend of mine from Nairn was in The Merchant Navy in the mid 70s and on this particular trip he was in NY, and had a days shore leave, so he went exploring. Walking over a footbridge, much to his amazement he saw a guy with whom he went to school with, but didn't really care for, coming towards him. He stopped: "Cheez, well well well, John Smith (or whatever). This is a surprise. Fancy seeing you here."
Mr Smith did not break his stride, said "Hello Iain", and carried on walking. Iain THEN remembered why he did not like him. He was an unsociable twat.

Years ago I was sitting in the lobby of a police station waiting to report the theft of my wallet, when a woman that I recognized extremely well passed me and walked out. She stopped and came back, asking; "Don't I know you ?" "Yes I think you do", I said.
We stared at each other and started to name every place we had ever been ( schools, workplaces, streets where we or any of our friends had ever lived, names of friends and family ) to find out where we had met, but we finally ran out of suggestions and neither of us could remember the answer to that riddle.
It was really odd, because we both knew that we had seen each other many many times, not just once or twice or in passing waiting for the same bus, but we still couldn't find one single place or time that we had in common!
I still wonder sometimes who she was.