For a split second Joe Calzaghe had me worried.
"At times like this, do you remember the days you spent training in your shack at Newbridge?" I asked him, referring to the old ramshackle gym in which he learned his trade.
"Don't call it a shack," he said, before flashing that grin at me. "That shack got me where I am today.
"I can still remember the smells of the place."
That was me told! Joe has more of a reverence for that place than he will ever have for some posh Las Vegas venue.
You can take the boy out of Newbridge.....
I know people are going to think me sad for saying this, buut since I've been here I haven't so much a put a dime in a slot machine.
It's not that I'm tight (stop sniggering at the back) it's just that I have no interest whatsoever in gambling. I just don't.
I have one vice - the ale. I don't smoke.
Come to think of it, perhaps this trip was wasted on me.
Tell you what, I might have a go on the roulette wheel before I leave. I'll do what I have always done on the odd occasion I have been in Les Croupiers on St Mary Street.
Buy two chips, study the red-black sequence for half an hour, conclude via the law of averages that the next roll has to land on red, place my bet with trepidation, then watch the ball settle on black.
No wonder I don't gamble!
I have learnt in the past, almost to my cost, not to try to cross an American road while the sign reads "Don't walk".
But the lesson hasn't sunk in.
Yesterday I got fed up of waiting while there appeared to be no traffic movement and set off across the tarmac.
Big mistake. Next thing I'm nearly wiped out by a silver Buick whose driver hit the horn with gusto.
Then it struck me, I have never seen a zebra crossing in America.
end