Rails - Feb 2006 - Override automatic accessor for reference field in model

When a column in a database table is actual data, rather than an fkey to 
another table, I can override the automatic accessor by just doing the 
following:

def field_name
  # do something here
  read_attribute(field_name)
end

This does not seem to work for me if the field is an fkey, say user_id, 
linking to another table. I''ve made this work by aliasing the accessor 
like this:

alias old_field_name field_name
def field_name
  #do something
  old_field_name
end

This works, but is there a built in function that I need to call to 
avoid having to alias this? I''ve tried calling read_attribute(user_id) 
and read_attribute(user) - neither works for me.

TIA,
Keith

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