The first Christmas after my sister moved to New York, she gave me one of the most amazing gifts I’d ever received: a signed polaroid of her with my favourite musician, Ben Folds, whom she’d met at a Brooklyn bar and asked to pose for a snap for her younger sister. I treasured that picture, signed by Ben himself, and stuck it up on the wall of each flatshare I moved into over the next ten years or more. It was only recently, when I found the polaroid in a photo wallet, that I noticed for the first time that none of the men in the photo were, in fact, award-winning piano genius Ben Folds.

It remains, however, one of my most cherished possessions.