The Finnish secret was out. And, I'll be honest, I was shocked. A little bit stunned even. Surely he was joking. Joking he was not.
I'm going to keep the identity of my two Finnish friends a secret - their revelations probably wouldn't go down terribly well in these days of health and, above all, safety.
A few years ago, I was trying to source the sisu. Sisu, for the uninitiated, is an inner-steel, an ability to dig deeper and give more of yourself - the sort of attribute that was a prime requirement for keeping the Russians at bay through the 1939 Winter War; when Moscow wanted eastern Finland to become western Russia. Despite being hugely outnumbered, the Finnish border held firm.