The following night, a guard mistook him for an intruder after the former Russian president was discovered stumbling drunkenly around the basement of the official visitor's residence. The embarrassing details about the extent of Mr Yeltsin's drinking habits have been revealed by Bill Clinton. The former US president made the disclosures to Taylor Branch, a writer and former flatmate, whom he invited to compile a new 'oral history' of the presidency based on 79 taped interviews.

According to excerpts in USA Today of Branch's new book, the 707-page The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President, Mr Clinton kept the tapes of the interview hidden in his sock drawer. Mr Branch, however, would make his own tape after each interview in which he would immediately record what Mr Clinton had told him. Mr Yeltsin was reportedly staying at Blair House, the White House guest residence, in 1995 when the Secret Service discovered him standing alone and barely clothed on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The president, who died two years ago, told them in slurring words that he wanted a pizza, wrote Mr Branch. Mr Clinton was more coy about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, merely saying he "just cracked" under personal and political pressure. Mr Branch said he sent his book to Mr Clinton to proof-read but he did not ask for any changes.

Good job Boris was a happy drunk... if he'd been a mean one Europe would be a smoking, radioactive wasteland!

In retrospect cremation was an unwise choice.

The original was here