During the week I had an email from an old friend of mine, Frenk, who lived in Innsbruck in the mid 1990s and was in a band with the ridiculous moniker of Play The Tracks Of. Neither Frenk nor his co-band-member Werner seemed embarrassed about the name, far from it, but when I first heard it I remember shaking my head in disbelief. You can't end a band name in the word OF, any more than you can begin one with the word CRISPS. Anyway, I've got over it now. They split 2 years ago, but for a time their Pet Shop Boys-y pop was pretty successful in Austria, if not elsewhere. David Fricke, Rolling Stone's editor, adjudged their album “Beauty Case” as his favourite pop record of 1996. They sold 1 copy in the USA as a result.

Anyway, Frenk was in London yesterday with his girlfriend Ulli, and we sat in the fantastically peaceful and civilised Horse Bar near Waterloo to reminisce and recall. We first met when Frenk and Werner put on a gig by Hungarian band Kampec Dolores in Innsbruck in 1993; I did some work for Kampec at the time, and so when The Keatons found ourselves with a day off during a Swiss tour on the same night as aforementioned gig, I phoned through and pleaded for us to be added to the bill – which they kindly did. Hence our first gig in Austria, after a stunning drive through the mountains and a large plateful of wonderful Turkish food. To repay the favour I got them a first on slot at the Samuel Beckett in Stoke Newington in the summer of 1995, after a less-than-stunning ride on the 149 bus through the wastes of Dalston, and a bag of chips on the way home. I've always felt like I owed them, after this.

Anyway, it turns out that Frenk isn't called Frenk at all. His name is Reinhold. I had no idea. It's difficult to start calling someone a different name after 10 years, purely because he's abandoned his pop career. I'm sure when Elton John retires, George Michael won't suddenly start calling him Reg. Anyway, he filled us in on doing a songwriting workshop with Nick Cave, and writing a song for a girl singer about falling in love with the dog on her screensaver, which ended up getting to number 8 in the Austrian charts.

At some stage in the evening, Frenk / Reinhold used the word “pointy”. This led to a 5-minute attempt by Jenny to explain the inherent humour in the poem which Steve Martin recites in the film “The Man With Two Brains”: Pointy Birds, Oh Pointy Pointy / Anoint My Head, Anointy-nointy. It was tough. Trying to explain to speakers of German how a) birds could be pointy, b) what anoint means, c) how rhyming pointy with nointy is a good idea. In the end she abandoned it and we ordered some potato wedges instead.

On the way home, we encountered some very drunk but very polite teenagers. It was a revalation. No swearing, no violence – they were the epitome of consideration. When the bus driver ceded to their requests to allow them to get off at the front of the bus instead of at the exit doors, they sang – very quietly – “All hail, the bus driver, all hail, the bus driver, bus driver.” And then, as they got off, they wished him a pleasant evening. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.