Seven Things about Me you don't know and won't learn from anywhere else on my profile

1. I learned Russian when I was 12
2. I once opened the fuselage door of a TU-154 in Saint Petersburg when the ground crew could not manage it.
3. I travelled to Italy at the age of 16 with my school orchestra as the orchestra manager. I made a photo documentary with over 500 slides and sound recordings. We played to ecstatic audiences in the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and rounded off the Redentore Festival in Venice.
4. I once put in the two fastest laps of the day when racing against a professional go-kart driver — all the while nursing a brutal hangover.
5. I once drove from Edinburgh to Biarritz and back to "run-in" a Mazda MX-5. That's around a 2,346 mile round trip. (3,775km)
6. I played Chemical Brothers very loudly as I drove my sportscar around the Arc d' Triomphe several times at midnight, after having dined with Samuel Beckett's publisher.
7. In 1994 I sold a painting by a then largely unknown Russian artist  for £1800 to Sir Peter Ustinov after an hour's swapping stories.