The year I lived in Moscow was the worst year of my life

I worked as a TV journalist in our Moscow bureau during the fall of the Soviet Union. It was not the happiest of times.

I opened the door of the apartment I had been allocated, just off Tverskaya Yamskaya street in central Moscow and immediately took a leap back. The place had been empty for a few weeks and in the interim, it seemed as if an army of cockroaches had moved in. I managed to get through to an extermination company on the phone ‘это срочно!’ - it’s urgent! I promised them the ludicrous sum of $100 to come immediately. I was told to leave the flat for a couple of hours while they did their thing and I wandered around the Arbat until it was time to go back. The floor was covered in dead cockroaches which had staggered out of their hiding places. I grabbed the phone again and dialed the only person I knew who answered, our chief correspondent. ‘Please come and clear these things up for me! You can have the giant Toblerone I bought in Duty Free!’ He came, he swept the insects into the trash and nobly declined the Toblerone: but it was not an auspicious start.