If you're Scottish you already know that Steve is one third of a troupe of sanity-challenged northern Caledonians called Scotland the What? They do sketches and songs in The Doric, which is the accent of Scots from Aberdeen roughly up to Peterhead. Well, not so much an accent as a dialect. Well, perhaps less a dialect and more a full-blown regional conspiracy.
(Scots can skip this next bit, too.) The Doric's most sinister tactic is to pronounce the aspirated 'w' ('wh…', as in 'why, where, when' and so forth) as an 'f'. Yup, that's right. An Eff. The vowels are all over the place, so 'what' = 'fit', 'where' = 'far', 'when' = 'fan' and 'how' (which clearly doesn't have a 'w' but which they screw up for completeness' sake) = 'foo'. Men are addressed as 'loon' and women as 'quine'.

The standard greeting is thus 'Fit like, loon, foo's yer doos?' which translates as 'How are you, mate, and how's your pigeons?' the correct response to which is considered to be 'Ay puckin' ('still active').

I am not making this up. Either - as seems likely - Aberdonians talk like this among themselves the whole time or else they have all been spookily drilled in starting it the second a Sassenach shows his face. I'm not sure which would be weirder.

Anyway, in this photograph, Steve was explaining to me, in The Doric, how to get to his house. My job was to stand there and pretend that I didn't understand him. For this they paid me two grand a week. I love pantomime.

Oh, and I got to plant a tree outside the theatre, with a brass plaque which still bears my name (see arboricultural photograph.)