lewis jones recounts an evening of good stories, cold white wine and a woman in red underwear |
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Inever dined with an oligarch until last month, when I had dinner with Boris Berezovsky. "They call me oligarch!" he said indignantly, with a harsh Russian 'k' at the end.
We're sorry, Boris, but you trousered however many billions - "If you ask me,” he said, "I honestly don't know" - from the privatisation of the Soviet infrastructure (oil and also Aeroflot). You live in Chelski and Belgravia, and also in Sussex and on a yacht. And your old friend Vladimir, who used some of your billions to attain power, would now like them all back. Just as he would like you face down in the polonium soup.
So please forgive us for thinking of you as an oligarch, as well as an enemy of the Russian regime, and a diplomatic hot potato.
In navy Savile Row and tieless white shirt, Boris was fit - he's 62 - and well fed. He looked heavy, as in dangerous, and clever. |
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| In navy Savile Row suit and tieless white shirt Boris was fit and well fed |
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He's a mathematician by training, he reminded us, and a member of the Russian Academy of Scientists.
He was friendly, funny and eloquent (he used to be a Russian MP, and one can imagine him addressing the Duma), and smoking Parliament cigarettes (a sly joke, perhaps). He'd never smoked marijuana, but in Israel the other day - he's Jewish, and the security guy guarding our table was ex-Mossad - someone passed him a joint, and he definitely preferred it to tobacco.
He was drinking white wine, and held up his glass to the candlelight. "I was drinking white wine with Lugovoi, the day he killed Litvinenko."
Listening to Boris, it's hard not to believe everything he says; the best one can do is suspend one's disbelief. There is an overwhelming quality to his sincerity, a legacy possibly of his first incarnation as a used car salesman.
In the early 1990s, he explained, he went to Germany, bought old Mercedes saloons at DM 700 a pop, then sold them in Moscow  |
