Yet it was at this moment that Robin Harrison, the Warden of my college, Merton, Oxford introduced me to his old friend Professor James Meade 1 who came down from that other place, Cambridge, for an excellent lunch.
Over lunch, Meade steered me towards demography and the runaway population explosion that he had identified as the biggest threat to Mauritius, which was then a world leader in the fertility stakes! Meade was pleased to see me to exchange views on the prospects for Mauritius.