'Do you like the band.. U2?' the man asks me, while gnawing on a piece of barbecued faux filet.
It’s Friday night in a rural town square in southwest France. Everyone is eating and drinking at shared tables, apart from a group of octogenarians who are crushing the moves to The Macarena, which is being performed by a pair of spritely 60-somethings on a keyboard with built-in demo tracks.
'Because if you do like the band U2, I have some information you might want to hear.'
The man takes another bite of steak and I notice he is using a bowie knife that he clearly brought with him from home. He looks like William Dafoe, so much so that I start to wonder if it is actually the real William Dafoe.
He tells me he lives locally. 'I have a couple of different jobs. I work for the government. In management.' He pauses to let me absorb that. 'I'm also a fireman.'
The William Defoe management fireman tells me that a friend of his will be performing in a U2 cover band later on, just around the corner. 'All the hits...' he adds, raising his eyebrows.
Now I was genuinely interested in seeing how this would play out, but I had a 10 mile ride / walk home, most of it probably in pitch darkness. I wasn't sure I could face that after watching a rendition of 'Beautiful Day' performed by a sheep farmer dressed as Bono. Perhaps next week though.
In a shocking twist of fate, I later discovered that the U2 cover band was actually the real U2. So I dodged a bullet there.