It looks like the joke was on me this time

SO a gay Scot, a virgin and a journalist walk into a bar ...

No, it's not the pub Damian Bathersby visited on the weekend but there are similarities ... can you spot them? Picture: DAN HIMBRECHTS

I KNOW you all think I'm a sophisticated man-about-town.

"Suave" is the word that gets used occasionally.

"Debonaire" also cops a mention.

So you might imagine I like to hang out in high-class establishments drinking nothing but the finest champagne or 10-year-old scotch.

Not so. You are more likely to find me in a pub somewhere, rubbing shoulders with the unwashed masses.

Beer, bourbon and a good rock band - they're the main courses in my entertainment buffet.

And that's exactly what I was enjoying when my wife and I found ourselves in a Brisbane pub last weekend.

How we ended up spending an entire afternoon and most of the night drinking with complete strangers is a story in itself ... and I'll tell you once I remember it.

I do know that we met some interesting people.

Like the group of "pilgrims" on a tour of 13 pubs to spread the Easter message.

We were at pub No.12, so by the time they got to us they'd not only forgotten the message, most of them didn't realise there was one to start with.

A girl wearing a bedsheet and claiming to be the Virgin Mary stopped to chat.

I don't think her name was really Mary, by the way.

The rest of her story was also a bit far-fetched.

She helped herself to the plate of hot chips we were sharing, downed the remains of my drink and staggered off in search of pub No.13.

I wished her luck in her quest but she said she wouldn't need it.

It wasn't long before a Scotsman joined us.

He claimed his name was Scot, which I doubted, and told us he was gay, which I didn't doubt.

He told us he was retracing his steps from three nights earlier when he'd lost his phone, his glasses and his boyfriend.

"I haven't seen any of them since," he explained.

When he finally left us, I wished him luck in his quest.

"I hope I at least find my phone - I paid a lot of money for it," he said.

And so the night went on until I uttered the fateful words - "should we go to the casino or head home?"

Thankfully, we chose home and woke up richer than we might otherwise have.

"A gay Scot, a virgin and a journalist walk into a pub," I said to my wife over a breakfast of coffee and Panadol.

I've forgotten how it went after that but I remember laughing and laughing.

"You're an idiot," she said.

It's hard to disagree.

Originally published as It looks like the joke was on me this time