An Australian, Finn and Frenchman were sitting around at a Helsinki café one evening. After a few glasses of wine, they felt compelled to play a silly game that soon turned raucous. It was loftily entitled ‘Name the famous people from our respective countries’ and it continued for round after round. The premise was, however, simple. Name well-known individuals from the two countries other than your own. The country with the most tally wins.

The Frenchman was at a distinct advantage due to length of national history and population size, so the parameters were limited to ‘famous 20th century French.’

Serge Gainsbourg, INXS, Nightwish… André the Giant, Cathy Freeman, Mika Häkkinen... Gerard Depardieu, Nicole Kidman… umm… Mannerheim…

The list went on and on, but then stretched to grasping at straws by listing all the known politicians, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, boyfriends, girlfriends, slang, food, in fact anything with a vaguely Australian, Finnish or French character.

France emerged as the clear winner, trouncing the rest of the field, with Australia in second place and Finland finishing up as third. But there were some interesting discoveries made on the night – for instance, that mobile phones giant Nokia is Finnish (and don’t ever forget it!)

While Nokia entered the telecommunication market in the 1960s, the company actually dates back to a wood-pulp mill established in 1865. So it emerges that a name synonymous with great mobile phone offers and mobile phone deals is actually from the Nokianvirta river and the town Nokia, after an early relocation from Tampere. What does this all have to do with UK mobile phones? Not much really, as the company originally specialised in rubber, wood, cables and eventually all sorts of bits and bobs like paper products, footwear, tires, PCs and communications cables. Lucky they stuck with the communications theme, and went mobile in the 1980s, and the rest is known history. Nokia is now the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, and has industrial research sites in Finland and the UK, as well as four other countries.

So that’s the deal on mobile phones - and I’d like to add my congratulations to Finland. That’s worth bonus points over France and Australia!