Men of the Quaff

Vodka, pizza and folk dancing

The President of pissheads, Boris Yeltsin was once a titan of politics, but by the end of his tenure in 1999, he had become a running joke - his rat-arsed behaviour embarrassing diplomats, dignitaries and even his own press officers, not to mentions millions of Russians. It was a slow painful decline for the man who rallied the people of Russia from the top of a tank, hailed as a hero and defender of democracy. Now he's better known for defending his precious bottle of vodka.

The longer he was in power, the weirder his behaviour got. In 1994, he fucked up a diplomatic trip to Ireland by allegedly getting so sloshed he couldn't get off the plane, leaving his reps to walk down the red carpet at Shannon Airport and explain to the waiting Irish Prime Minister that he was too "unwell" to get off.

Handing out awards at the Kremlin at the height of the Kosovo crisis, he slurred out a message to then US President Bill Clinton that he would 'send a missile' should he cause any accidents in Yugoslavia. His press pokesman moved at the speed of light to point out that this wasn't an official statement of policy.

On a visit to Sweden in December 1997, he announced out of the blue that Russia was cutting its nuclear arsenal by a third, before his press secretary had to point out that Russia was in fact not cutting back on any nuclear weapons at all.

A couple of months later the Pope was forced to sit down after trying to end a meeting with Bollocksed Boris when he told him: "Holy Father, we haven't finished yet!" At the subsequent banquet, Yeltsin declared his 'boundless love for Italian women' as part of his toast to the holy one.

A legendary drinker then. It was also recently revealed by Bill Clinton that Boris got so drunk during a visit to Washington that he was found standing outside the white House in his underpants trying to hail a cab to go and buy a pizza. The following night he was mistaken for a drunken intruder when he was discovered stumbling around the basement of his guest house by secret service agents.

Just shows even the most important people in the world like one too many. Good on ya, Boris.