MaxDate and Second to max date

Hi all,

Ok Ill provide 2 records to start the ball rolling

Worksrollnumber               Surname                 Latest Pay Date    Amount      Last Pay Date     Amount
   123456                             Bloggs                     21/10//08              890              21/09/08            890
   789101                             Doe                          21/010/08            1000             21/02/08           650

Ok, the 2 records above are what I want to see, and a comparison will be done to highlight differences in monthly pension payments.   What I need to do is find the Max Date of all employees i.e their Latest pay Date and then the Second to max date, which means when a last entry was made, so it is 21/09/08 for Bloggs and 21/02/08 for Doe.  I have written a query to get the Max Date for each row.  Now I need to find the second to max date.  I have tried multiple nested queries and also created a MaxDate view and queried that but I only got 'too many values'  What I am trying to do is get a maxdate of the set of dates which arent equal the current max date.   Sounds simple but it has been a ball ache :/  

Thanks