I was a proud man, always had been but times they were a changing. With the election of Gorbachev came Glasnost then Perestroika. The iron curtain was fraying at the seams. For the aging party faithful like myself, the final days of our once proud totalitarian state brought precious little to smile about.

By day I braved the ice-strewn, mountainous seas of the Bering Strait, trawling the depths in search of the slippery and highly elusive cock-fish. The pittance I earned could be tripled in port at Vladivostok or Petropavlovsk with just half a dozen of these sublime creatures of the deep.

And by night, well, by night I played chess with Vladimir – a one-eyed salt-dog who stank of shit and stale tobacco. We drank potato-vodka from a tin, shared a battered corn pipe and told tales of far-away women and loose ports. It wasn’t until the next day amid the haze of a potato-vodka hangover you could see, that we’d realize we should have been talking about loose women and far-away ports. That potato-vodka is some fucked up shit man!

I find a glass of Pure Mike cleanses the palette after a serve of Fresh Dave.

If that was me in that video I’d live off the glory for the rest of my life. I’d probably sit in a pub near a surf beach and get a flat-screen tele made that could hang around my neck and I’d loop that video indefinitely. Underneath the screen on my t-shirt it would say, “that’s me in that video” with an arrow pointing to the video. I’d drink rum and smile and be very happy that I was alive.

That’s what I’d do if that was me in that video.

The man with the animals – purveyor of fine breakfast TV comedy since 1956.

Sold my car, bought an Innocent Smoothie.

The time was right. Vladimir would share his secret. He whispered into the ear of his close friend Yuri, “rearrange these words comrade: nuts is Svetlana freakin”

It’s interesting to note that in the current market, the price of God and the price of Salmon is exactly the same – $5.99 a kilo!