Asylum is easy - if you have a butler

BORIS Berezovsky became a billionaire in Yeltsin's chaotic Russia (shot of mob waving little McDonald's flags). He invited ordinary folk to invest in a privatised car factory he was buying. He got his factory, they allegedly got nothing back in return.

That, according to Russian Godfathers, was how he got started. He ended up in Yeltsin's cabinet but got the heave when Putin took over. Accused of corruption, he sought asylum in Britain and, here, butlers bring him beverage as he sits plotting Putin's downfall. In the home counties, he owns big posh hooses, guarded by Foreign Legion veterans.

He also owns Russia's equivalent of the *Financial Times, which is edited by a man in a black polo-neck. He told a man in a sweatshirt, who edits Russia's main opposition paper, that he'd only been behind protests in Ukraine "in spirit". But, in secret, he'd poured material millions into the opposition.

He set up another newspaper there, edited by a man in a black polo shirt. He also offered the Ukrainian authorities secret tapes of previous government ministers plotting to murder a journalist. But they turned these down, fearing to offend Old Ma Russia.

Undaunted, Boris stirred things up in Latvia by calling a press conference to denounce Putin. The Russians went doolally and threatened to cut off Latvia's energy supplies, which plunged the government into chaos. Another day another dollar for Boris. He left in his private jet.

For a few dollars more, he soon returned, this time with a new software business partner: Neil Bush, brother of George.

What shenanigans. These guys are a hoot, addicted to intrigue and jiggerypokery. But I couldn't help feeling: "This is not the way we do things here."

In New York, 20 or 30 years ago, you took your life in your hands just going out the door. A surgeon interviewed in I Killed John Lennon recalled taking the singer's heart in his hands and trying to pump it back to life.

Lennon was killed 25 years ago by Mark Chapman, who thought himself Holden Caulfield from *Catcher In The Rye. To compound matters, he was a born-again Christian although, before murdering Lennon, he'd been praying to Satan. Nothing like hedging your bets.

Here, we heard tapes of him talking in a calm, intelligent voice about the killing. The interviews were conducted in 1990 with the journalist, Jack Jones.

Altogether, there were 100 hours of interviews, mostly biographical verbiage and narcissistic havering. Pictures showed a crew-cutted kid in a dickie-bow tie, as American as apple pie and friendly fire. Growing up in the Bible Belt, he'd been a Beatles fan since childhood. A lonely boy with imaginary friends, he grew to admire Lennon and found an identity in the counterculture he helped inspire.

But, in 1971, he became disillusioned when a counterculture vulture liberated his wallet. Having lost a wallet, he soon found Jesus. This cheered him for a bit but not long. He attempted suicide in Honolulu. Then he married a Hawaian girl and got happy again. Then he went bonkers again, and immersed himself in JB Salinger's alienated adolescent antihero: misunderstood, lonely, better than the phonies (everyone else).

Ten years after becoming born-again, he remembered Lennon and thought him the biggest phoney of all. "I remember thinking, 'Perhaps my identity would be found in the killing of John Lennon.'" Little men in his head said: "Do it, do it, do it!" So he did it.

Somebody said: "He's a nobody who wants to be somebody." He showed no remorse or consideration for others. He might have gone far in Russia.