Guyon Espiner

But there were still some Americans that believed that he was a false flag and that he wasn't a real defector.

Now, there's still discussion today that Nosenko may have been a triple agent.

But regardless, he came out to New Zealand in the 1970s.

I spent a day with him.

I actually took him for a bit of a drive around town.

And then he said, come on, we'll have a drink.

And he took off the cap and he looked at me and he squeezed it.

Looked at me and squeezed it.

Anyway, we were talking and he said, I was a little bit of my bad Russian, and he said, And I said, what's that?

He said, do you know what that is?

And he said, do you not understand?

He said, literally, it means don't piss in my eye, but it means, you know.

He said, can you swear in Russian?

I said, no.

He said, well, you can't speak Russian.

So he said, so we're in this hotel room sitting on the floor and I've still got the notes, big yellow sheets of paper with his scrawl on it saying,

They're teaching me all this Russian.

Shit, I was drunk.

Apologies to the Russian speakers in our audience.

Kit Bennett says they had a less liquid lunch some years later in the US.