New Zealand-born Russell Crowe returned to his hometown of Wellington in April 2006 with his band “The Ordinary Fear of God” (TOFOG) as part of a three gig tour. His former band “Thirty Odd Food of Grunts” dissolved and evolved into the new TOFOG the previous year.

In 2002, he won a Golden Globe for his performance in A Beautiful Mind, and went on to win the BAFTA, but missed out on the Oscar when Denzel Washington pipped him for Training Day. However, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association gave him the Globe, but didn’t have a gong for New Zealand’s big hope, Peter Jackson’s first instalment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring.

I sent him a copy of an editorial cartoon I did back then to mark the event. He signed and sent it back – writing his name under his usual ‘Russell’ siggy, just in case I didn’t know it was his ‘graph.