It’s true that The Dude never explicitly says he was a surfer.

However an ageing Californian with a penchant for Creedence, filter-less joints and loose fitting clothes had to have been part of the scene at some point.

Impervious to insult, unruffled by the most dastardly of Germanic super-villains, and a stoic practitioner of Taoist and Zen philosophy, The Dude was to the deadhead movement what Martin Luther King was to Civil Rights – he gave us self-belief.

Some say his dream has now come to fruition with entire religious sects devoted to Dudeism and a “Burning Dude” festival held each year behind LAX airport, in which robed dudists smoke fatties, drink White Russians and burn effigies of the dude.

Long may the dude, abide.