This New Zealand man who woke to a stranger on his couch is the hero we don't deserve.

All great stories start with someone walking into their lounge room only to find a complete and utter stranger fast asleep on their couch.

Said stranger is attempting to use a bean bag for a blanket, and there are so many questions to be asked there simply is no way to ask them.

This is what happened to Gordon Pryor, a fisherman from Mangawhai in New Zealand, early on Saturday morning.

While most people would be tempted to, say, yell at the stranger, or demand they, um, leave, or even call the police, Pryor didn’t do any of these things. He was pretty… chill.

Instead, he made himself a cup of coffee and some toast and watched over the stranger as he slept. Then, he called his eldest son, who also happens to be a police officer, and just… relayed the situation. His son assured him that the stranger was breaking the law, but Pryor didn’t mind.

“It was a mathematical equation, you know?” Mr Pryor told the NZ Herald.

“Try and wake him up, argue with him, sort him out, ‘What’s the problem?’ Or, ‘S***, look the kid needs to sleep, just watch him, just make sure he’s okay.’”

While he waited for his 'guest' to wake up, Pryor did what any reasonable person would do. He took a photo and posted it to Facebook.

On the Mangawhai Locals Facebook page, he asked if anyone knew who the sleeping man was. While the responses weren't particularly helpful, they were very curious, with several locals keen to find out what the story was behind the tired stranger.

Eventually, Pryor woke the young man up, and asked if he wanted coffee. But when he responded, "that'd be good, cheers," Pryor was having precisely none of it. "There’s the f***en jug, you get over there and sort it out because you’ve had a free night’s kip and I’m not making you coffee," he said. "You get up there and help yourself."

Oh... okay.

But then Pryor sat with the young man, who shared his name although the NZ Herald has chosen not to release it, and asked him how the hell he ended up sleeping on a stranger's couch.

Apparently he had been at a music festival when he caught a shuttle bus he thought would take him to his accommodation. Clearly, it didn't.

“I don’t know where he got dropped off and he doesn’t know either,” Mr Pryor said, a statement which sums up every drunken night we've ever had, ever.

“He said he was trying to walk to Waipu, so he obviously thought, ‘Well, where’s north?’ and then cut through farms and tracks and then thought, ‘There’s a house, I’ll just go and crash in that.’"

Pryor says the two men spoke for about an hour, before the young man was picked up by a friend. They got a photo together, which was very much appreciated by the people of the Mangawhai Locals Facebook page, with some people making the very valid point that the stranger is handsome and could someone share his phone number, please.

“He was really humble, a helluva nice kid," said Pryor.

He did, however, try to stress to the young man that entering a random house and sleeping on their couch because you can't find your way home isn't exactly an acceptable thing to do.

But overall, Pryor described it as "harmless".

May we all enter 2018 a little more like Gordon - willing to let people sleep on our couches, but also prepared to give them a solid lecture about getting their own coffee when they wake up.